Hi, I am down in Rochester. If you are trying to grow tomatoes in pots you might consider the size of the pots you are trying to use. Are the pots too small for the tomatoes? Later in life, the tomato plant needs a pretty big pot and a trellis or cage to grow up. You may want to visit a local garden store and ask about a large plant pot and tomato cage or stake system. you could also google information about making your own "earth box" as I hear those work well on tomatoes. hope this helps

Im no expert but I can tell you that you can get all the figs you want from pots. I have found as long as you keep potted figs watered more then you would for inground trees they do well. One of my trees was over stressed by lack of water last year just for a few hours and the figs fell off. That wont happen again. I got over 300 figs last year from 4 trees in pots. I got 10 figs from my 2 trees in the ground. I dug up one of my ingrounds and potted it this spring and it is showing new growth already. Pots work and if you keep them well watered they will be fine. There is a nursery on Long Island that has a 30 year old fig tree in a pot. Root pruning every few years also helps your tree stay manageable.

If I can grow mint here in the subtropics of Australia, where the heat and humidity can be fierce, you can grow mint in Texas! And 8" pot is a very small pot indeed, especially for mint. Get the largest pot you can manage - I reckon 12" is still too small. Mint has a very aggressive root system, and even in a pot that size, you'll probably have to repot a couple of times a year to prevent it getting rootbound. I keep mine in partial shade (on the edge of a covered pergola, half in/half out of the sun). It's important to keep the soil moist at all times - never let it dry out. Ditto for lemon balm.

I did manage to kill a pot of Lemon Balm last year when the macrame that the pot was hanging from let loose and the pot plunged 12 feet to the concrete below. I guess you could say they never bounced back LOL!. On the other hand, I did have some in a window box, and when the summer was over and everything else in the windowbox was dead, I just assumed the lemon balm was too so I pushed it under a garden bench and forgot it. For months it was devoid of both direct sunlight and water, the soil was like styrofoam until the night of our first frost when I was looking for something to cover some other plants I ran across the lemon balm again. There it was, still green and trying it's best to grow. I quickly rescued it, brought it inside and repotted it into some fresh soil and one of my Stack-A-Pots and stuck it in the light-box (which usually dosen't see any action over the winter). It was happy as a clam in warm mud and did fine over the winter. Come spring it leafed out and bushed out so pretty I had to take it's picture. It's not looking too happy right now though, I just divided it last week into 3 larger containers LOL! Needless to say, Lemon Balm is the "Abrahams Tank" of the Garden. :D Best Wishes Amino-X