If your plants are felled like a tree, that is cutworms.

Here is how you deal with those.

I don't know if you can do it by this description, because I learned from watching my dad in tobacco, but if you can find the first one, you'll never fail to find the others.

So you find the last felled plant and go out in a grid pattern from there...

When a cutworm eats through a stem, they either burrow in right there beside the last plant they ate through, OR they move on to the NEXT plant they plan to eat, burrow into the soil, and sleep through the day. The next night, they get up, yawn, stretch, and dig out to eat through that stem.  Then they move on to the next, burrow in, rinse and repeat.

SO...find the felled stem, check the soil around it, and move out from there to the next plant.  

NOW...dig down beside each plant, starting with the felled ones. Just take your fingers and rake through the soil a couple of inches down (maybe three inches but probably not), watching carefully.  You only have to go three or four inches out from the stem.  They don't go far usually. The worm is the same color as your soil, pretty much.  Hard to see.  But he's there.   Watch for him.  He will be curled up usually.  Send him to the great pepper field in the sky.   (Be careful not to dig in to the root of your plant. The cutworm is not that close, and not that deep as a rule)  

Do EVERY FELLED PLANT, then move out in a grid-pattern to the plants that are THE NEXT CLOSEST STANDING TARGET and search around those.  The next morning you will only have to do a fraction of this, because though you may have more than one, you don't have thousands.  Cutworms don't work that way. They are Spec Ops.  A few cutworms do a lot of damage one plant at a time.  So as you find them, you've eliminated a large percentage of your problem. So you go out the next morning and see if you have any felled plants.  If you do, you've cornered the one that is there.  Start with that felled plant, then move out to all the NEXT CLOSEST STANDING TARGETS around it. They seldom skip a standing plant and go to the next one.

Does this make sense?

Okay, if I've confused you, ask questions.  I learned to save high-dollar tobacco crops this way, on a small farm where every plant mattered.

Cutworms hate me.

ETA:  I have considered doing a video of how to find cutworms this way.  It won't be any good for this year, but if people are interested, I'll try to get some late plants and see if cutworms hit them, then I'll make a video of how to find them.  So let me know.

yeah, that's weird.  Cutworms sure as heck are not digging around your plants. HOWEVER, don't rule out the possibility that you have TWO issues going on.  Cutworms (or worms of another kind) and birds going after something maybe.

That could happen.

No way to know of course.

In that case, the birds would be doing you a favor. But not if they are tearing down your plants.

Cutworms fell plants just like felling a  little tree cut with a teensy weensy chainsaw. It's a straight cut usually, and usually nice and even.

I was about to make some smartass remark about dumping Autumn Squash soup on there as a fertilizer ( I love Panera soup) but realized this was posted a couple of weeks ago.

So...how has The Last Sunflower made out?

Oh heck...I don't know anything about your growing conditions.

Do the supports appear to be binding the plant in any way?  Like...do you have ties around the stem?

And here you see the adaptability of plants.

However you are extremely lucky. Had wind happened at the wrong moments, it would not have been able to build that new tissue fast enough, and would have been cut down.

Hoping to hear it is still standing strong.

AWESOME!

We really need some pics of that sunflower.  

Just sayin.