Welcome! You have chosen a hobby that can that can feed body and soul for a lifetime! Avocados sound like a difficult choice to me but I haven't tried myself. Have grown most of the others mentioned in pots. They all bear but don't expect enough to cut your food bill noticeably. Groworganic is a good supplier. I bought 10 of their trees last yr. Price is right and all grew but they were minimally packed and kinda dry on arrival. I'd suggest looking for bare root trees in January at big local nurseries. When I lived near Fresno they carried them at good prices and at the best planting time, mid winter. My favorite low chill nectarines that should be widely available bare root are Arctic Star and Snow Queen. Check out the San Diego chapter of California Rare Fruit Growers online or whatever chapter is nearby. They have long lists of best cultivars, scion exchanges, and regular meetings to learn and meet fellow growers.

Congratulations, you did a great job. A beautiful plant should not be looked at as disposable. You can have blooms each year which will last for months and months. As the plant ages, you can have multiple spikes with loads of flowers. Good for you, you have good gardening skills. When you got your plant it was blooming in December. Your Phal is a winter bloomer. It will grow this spring and summer making leaves and roots. Fertilize with normal orchid fertilizer weakly. In the fall, the days shorten and the temps start dropping. The Phal needs about 6 weeks of cool nights to initiate spikes - not positive if its 6 weeks or 4 weeks (you can look that up). They need a temp difference between warm and cold such as day temps in the 70's, nights in the 60's. Try to give it as much light without burning the leaves. Don't overwater, but do fertilize while you see growth. I do not fertilize while in flower, but other people do. You can try it both ways. Good luck, and please post back. Jane

Hi folks! Since you're on the east coast, another vendor that I have used and gotten very respectable trees is McKenzie Farms. This is my second year with citrus and I decided to buy some from here due to positive reviews on the citrus growers f o r u m. Shipping was very reasonable, well packaged and the trees were very nice. I got a 1 Gallon Meyer Lemon, Eureka Lemon, Key Lime, Kaffir Lime and a 3 gallon Moro. The 1G trees were about 12" tall. The 3G Moro was fantastic, about 4-5 feet tall and still had 4 small green oranges on it. The 1G trees were $20 and the 3G was $40. I repotted all into a 511 mix. I had used CHC+Peat last year, but decided that it dried out too fast inside over winter. I'll post a picture when I get home. Here is a link that might be useful: McKenzie Farms

Have never planted much but I LOVE gardening so I figured I'd be over zealous this year and started some veggie seeds inside. I live in zone 5b (southern WI) and have some concerns I was hoping to get feedback on. I just planted my red cherry tomatoes on the 17th. The seed packet says they should sprout in 7-15 days... well it's 5 days later and they have all come up. They look skinny and the stems are long.. like almost 3 inches with the cotyledons at the top. This doesn't look like any of the pictures I've seen so I think I've done something wrong :( I used a seed starter mix soil blend and they are in containers with a plastic dome on top. At the plant store they told me that tomatoes like "warm" and to use a heating pad... so I did. I bought a "germinating heating pad." Since I've never done this before, I asked a ton of questions and was advised to not water them with tons of water but to spritz them with water- which I do once a day. I'm not sure if what is happening is okay, or if something is going terribly wrong. Am I over-watering them? Are they not getting enough light? (they're in a window) Is the heating pad causing this? Should I take the plastic domes off? Do I need to start over? HELP!!! I am determined and motivated to make this work :)