I think a lot of plants have the most energy right when they start to spring back to life this time of year. That you can do all sorts of torture to them now and they will recover just fine because they are so pumped up and actively growing. But there is this touchy period when digging and dividing or potting up upsets the balance. There is basically no way to determine when that magic moment is - so I say, if the sprouts look healthy go ahead and dig and pot up. If the plant looks weak, leave it alone unless you would rather go ahead and replace it. In my fruit area I have plenty of doubled up plants, because I thought one was dying so I cut it back and planted a new one only to have the original plant return later and now I have two of them growing side by side (when they get bigger, one of them will have to go).

I haven't tried growing any California fuchsias from seed, but I bought two in one-gallon pots. I think one of mine died of drought; the other is still alive. My understanding is that they're not supposed to be very picky about drainage or watering or anything else. Some drainage is good, but it doesn't have to be excellent drainage. And they're supposed to be fairly drought-tolerant, at least after a year or so. But for the first year, I'd recommend giving them a fair amount of water, since mine seemed to need it.

Thanks everyone for the great comments! Chicagoans - We do not have a table pad for it yet. However, I will be looking for something, for sure. we also bought the scratch and stain protection plan. By request, I am including pictures of the china. However, the pictures don't do the pattern justice. There are two silver rings, one on the outer edge, and one on the inner edge. In between, there is just a white floral pattern that looks a lot like lace. Here are the plates: and here are the sets in our built in china cabinets. When we paint this week, I am going to paint the back of the cabinets the same color as the wall, so that the china stands out more. Thanks again for the positive feedback!

Hi Steve. It really does sound like you are trying to discourage people from growing their own citrus when you say things like: "6b "WAY TO FAR NORTH TO BE GROWING CITRUS" Steve" or "The vast amount of people that grow up north quit after a year or 2 when their trees die." In fact, statements like: " "We" are the small handful of citrus tree growers doing well with few troubles." are completely unfounded. Though I respect your opinion that growing citrus was the hardest experience you've ever had, it certainly wasn't for me. Personally I think that shoot tip micropropagation is complex, but not hard. I think that cultivating mycelium for master cultures is time consuming, but not hard. Basically, I think that all of the things you are saying are hard, are in fact easy with a little knowledge, which is the purpose of offering this guide. I don't think that growing citrus is "expensive, time consuming, and difficult". As a matter of fact as hobbies go, I'd say it can be rather cheap! To be clear that it CAN be rather cheap. If you want to spend a million bucks building a theme-park sized greenhouse then go ahead, but you certainly don't need to. If you want to spend $40 a bag on bark chips for your 5-1-1 mix then you can, but you don't have to. If you want to spend a grand on a fertilizer injector for your irrigation system, again you can but you don't have to. I'm sorry that you feel that this hobby is expensive, but I feel that you can keep you hobby on the very cheap side if you want to. That is to say that I managed to keep everything on the cheap side when tropical plants were not a part of my business and were just a hobby. Just for the sake of clarity, when you say that things are difficult to grow outside of their 'temperature zone', are you considering that every houseplant that you come across is being grown out of it's 'zone'. If what you said were entirely true then I don't think that I could grow the orchids, bromeliads, tree ferns and other wacky things that I do. You could even go so far as to say, that because these species are not native, they don't have anywhere as close to as many naturally occurring pests and therefore are EASIER to grow! I would like to encourage positive discussion, so if anybody would like to start a discussion about this elsewhere, please do. I would however like to hear from people who have something positive to contribute to the production of a citrus care guide, here. Thanks for the imput so far everybody. :)