Coriander (cilantro): A very short-lived annual, sometimes living out its entire life-cycle in a matter of 2-3 weeks. Those leaves won't have a good flavour (once they start changing to lacy, they've bolted), so just let the plants go to seed and die a natural death. It's too late to do much else! Those seeds will grow into more plants. Most people grow coriander by sowing new seeds every couple of weeks to keep up supplies of useful leaves. (successive planting) Chives: only 2 inches tall?? They won't be seeds on the leaves, they'll be dirt or bugs (probably aphids). You'll get seeds after the flowers die off - and flowers haven't happened yet, have they? They'll appear on the top of long, firm stems. Chives grow in a clump which you can divide once the clump gets larger (say when it's about 30cm/12" in diameter). Leave them be for now, and never prune the leaves at all unless you're actually harvesting. Wait until you have enough leaves to use. Dill: a photo would be useful. Dill can get about a metre tall, so it's still a tiny baby. Here's a picture of mature dill. http://julielepage.com/blog/photos/2005/07/15/3.jpg You can harvest the leaves any time you like, but never more than one-third of total growth at any one time, then let it regenerate before you harvest again. Same with most plants. Basil: still a tiny baby. I'm surprised there are no flowers yet. Basil can flower from a very early stage, and it's from the flowers that you get the seeds (same with most plants). It has a LOT of growing to do, (it will get to about 1 metre tall, maybe a bit more, and about the same wide), but you can harvest the leaves at any time, taking no more than one-third of total growth at any one time. To encourage a bushier plant, chop off the flowers. If your plant ends up like mine, you'll spend a lot of your life chopping off the flowers!! In brief, be patient!! Your plants are only tiny babies just yet, so you won't get any useful quantities from them. Forget about pruning for now. Wait another few weeks. Meantime, do some browsing via the Search button here on this forum for more information. You know, I really hate it when people try to generalise about 'herbs'. With 20000 known herbs on the planet, you can't generalise at all!

The plant I worked on today is F retusa, a VERY close relative of F microcarpa, your plant. They like the same cultural conditions, share the same growth habits, and would be difficult to tell apart if not for your gensing fig's unique (to the genus) root structure. It might have been sold as a bonsai or a pre-bonsai at some point, but the owner had no knowledge of how to tend to it, so just allowed it to grow - hard to say. The tree I worked was a leftover from a workshop our club had. It was a tree no one wanted. I've had it about 10 years and have altered it significantly through chops (cutting most of the trunk off, then training a branch upward as a new leader). It was only last year that I decided to train it as 2 trees. Eventually, the larger tree on the right will hover over the smaller tree in a mother/daughter arrangement. I'll repot it next summer into it's first bonsai pot where I can start refining it. Like yours, it's a strong (genetically vigorous) tree, which is why I removed a lot of leaves and cut the remaining leaves in half to slow it down. Limiting its ability to make food by reducing foliage volume limits internode length (the distance between leaves) and leaf size, both of which are desirable for bonsai. Good luck with your repotting and the recovery. Let me know if there is anything you think I can help with. I've spent time in Montana, the Bridger Range, Gravelly Range, Big Timber, and the Shields River Bottom, and loved every minute of it. What a beautiful State. One of my clearest memories was being on the ground while bow hunting elk, and ending up within 5 ft of a 42" plus Shiras bull moose in full rut who was raking the fresh blowdown I was using for cover. That was a scary moment, but still a fond memory of time spent in the mountains & foothills of your lovely state, which also has a way of making you feel humble while traversing its mountainous parts. Sorry to have wandered so far from the OT. Al

vesfl -- my once-blooming oldies are limited, in that I don't have any Albas or Centifolias, and aside from a few young Damasks in pots, the two I grow are 'Botzaris' (which is rather like a very prickly stout Gallica in habit, which also fits 'Leda' and a handful of others) and 'Quatre Saisons Blanc Mousseaux'. I have a few Gallicas planted where they can sucker if they want. Then there's "Nouveau Monde -- in commerce as" and a couple other oddballs. I've lived with them for a few years now, and let them teach me. So take this with a grain of salt. When I say I prune harder after the bloom, it's to sort of "refresh and contain" the roses. If I just dead-head the once-bloomers, they'll put out their new growth from where I cut off the faded blooms, and that new growth will continue growing, uninterrupted by a second flush, for another four or five months. I've been hypothesizing that the number of actively-growing buds is dictated by the extent of the root mass, as if the roots say "ok, we can support this many growth buds" to the top growth. That number can be contained within a few very long canes each with many active buds, or a lot of shorter canes each with fewer active buds. If you cut long canes back hard, lower growth buds which were sort of suppressed into dormancy by those higher up will sprout, making for bushier canes. If that's not enough, more new canes will emerge from the roots, and/or suckers will form. It's as if the roots say "hey, we said we could handle this many, but we're not getting as much food coming down here....do we need to send up more growth from below?" and they do. I like the Gallicas and 'Bozaris' to be broad, bushy, and low -- maxing at about four feet tall. So after they bloom, I cut the bloomed canes down by half (even if already shortened by a third before they leafed out), remove entirely any with few or no blooms, and if two canes are too close together, I cut out entirely the one that seems less vigorous, or older. From there, they will put forth next year's blooming canes. Because my growing season is longer than yours, I anticipate how big they'll be by Winter and keep that in mind when I'm deciding how much to remove. For you, reducing their length may not be necessary -- they may have only two months of active growth after blooming before going dormant in your area. I also find that doing this prompts suckers to sprout -- if they're in the way, I remove them as I find them. Otherwise, I leave them. The Gallicas were planted where I wanted them to sucker, but 'Botzaris' suckers get in the way, so I dig them out. Then there's "Nouveau Monde -- in commerce as" which I grow as a big climber against a raised deck railing, and a little into a tree. This rose was described by Vintage Gardens as belonging to "growth habit #3", which meant growing into a big, suckering haystack. Its main bulk fans out about fifteen feet wide and nine feet tall. All of its top-growth emerges from one cane emerging from the soil line. It has never sent up a sucker, and the only other cane it had was its original baby cane, long since pruned away. This remaining cane is over an inch in diameter now at the base. It grew up, then I turned it 45 degrees to the left, which prompted laterals, and those laterals were further turned, etc. This meant a LOT of actively-growing buds -- and probably what is suppressing the emergence of any new canes or suckers. So, in this case, I actually want to keep this situation going, because I simply can't fit any more of this rose in its spot -- new canes or suckers would not work. Before it leafs out, I just remove the dead or diseased parts, arrange the stems to where I want them to go, favor the stronger of two that are too close together, cut anything too thin to support a bloom, then snip what's left back just a bit to make it all fit. After the bloom, I cut it back harder, but only the parts extending beyond the top and sides of the railing. All the stuff below I pretty much leave. October 2013 -- six months after coming as a band. Note the cane going up against the railing -- this was trained to the left as it continued growing. Note the new shoots that seem to be coming from the roots -- they're not. They are laterals on that cane against the railing. Note the thin, twiggy bits down front -- those are the baby canes, which I later snipped away. Here it is in May 2014 -- baby canes still there, but all new growth you see along the railing began as laterals on that first new cane. There's also a clematis growing into it. May 2015 -- see how laterals upon laterals are growing? I got that starting because when the laterals went up and over the railing too high, I started tucking them back down to between 45 degrees and horizontal, in the opposite direction of the cane which sprouted the lateral, prompting those laterals to make laterals, and repeat. Lots of top mass suppressed more new canes and suckering. The baby canes are still there, but I cut them off after the bloom. April 2016 -- ok, now it's really getting huge, and still all of this is laterals upon laterals upon laterals.....from one main cane. If you look in the second pic, you can see that I've already cut the longest canes, which were long enough that they were arching toward the deck floor from their weight. Snipping them back made them stand upright. I then shortened those laterals, and trained them horizontally (or nearly so) against the top of the deck railing (after these pics were taken) And late May 2016 -- you can see the lateral-upon-lateral effect going on. Elsewhere, 'Duchesse d'Angouleme' (the one aka 'Wax Rose') is being trained the same way, but it's growing much more slowly than did NM-ica. Same idea, though -- one main cane, trained sideways, causing laterals to sprout, those laterals also trained sideways, those also sprouted their own laterals, etc. All that top growth is suppressing new canes and suckers below, so no worries about it taking over. So, long story short, I prune them after learning what they want to do, what they can do, and bending that to work for what I want them to do. :-) ~Christopher

I guess they are native plants somewhere in the world - probably think of them as weeds at these locations. I think we all learn through experience, mistakes, and outright neglect. At least the cold didn't kill the plant so it may have made it stronger? My sister-in-law and her husband bought a corn plant when they visited us about 35 years ago for our youngest daughter's 5th birthday. Middle of January and it was in the 70's. My wife took them to the major family owned (at the time) chain nursery in the Atlanta area and her sister bought a corn plant. The weather changed from 70's (short sleeve weather) to single digits overnight. Their vehicle at the time was a Chevy S-10 with a cap on it. They put the corn plant in the bed and my BIL said he watched that plant turn black on their return trip to Nashville (normally a four hour drive but longer this trip due to snow). It was dead (at least that is what they surmised). So I can see how your plant could get some cold damage carrying it around outside in freezing weather even if only for an hour. Sensitive aren't they? I don't know if Dracaena is monocarpic or not. The ones in Maui certainly didn't look like flowering ever hurt them? The couple who owned the garden (six acres?) provided lunch for the tour van and sold cuttings and other Hawaiian hand made knick-knacks. Here is a sample of their cuttings (expensive if you ask me)