The Douglah weren't out for very long - like a day while I added potting soil and fertilized them with fish emulsion midsummer - and 1 is fine. Should I just cut the other to stimulate growth? The bihs and serrano were out all summer, that's how they got aphids. I'll just try to keep up with them, thanks. These are in the family room in the south bay window, near the couch and I still got a couple aphids on my hands while I'm sitting here typing this AM so I'm not sure how long it will take to get rid of them. I guess I should move the 2 Douglah to another room so they don't get infested (if they aren't already). We've got tons of ladybugs now - anyone know if the Asiatic (orange) ones eat aphids ;-)? This post was edited by ajsmama on Fri, Oct 17, 14 at 12:01

Hey all, thanks for the comments. I appreciate the insight. My wife bought the coasters from lowes. They work pretty well although I have to hold the pots while I move them. I bought the trees off of fastgrowingtrees.com. They have a lot of trees to choose from and immediately replaced the one lime tree when it showed up broken in the box. The top 10 inches or so broke off. The replacement was much more robust. So overall customer svc has been good. Regarding planting, I originally planted using compost only. Then I learned that they need potting mix that drains well. More research led me to perlite and vermiculite and desert sand so I bought all three and mixed together and replanted all of the trees. After doing so I learned the tops of the root base/root ball should be slightly above the soil. So I fixed some and the others that were close I just opened up the space right around the top of root base. Sooooo I have a new question now. Well several. I bought some cheap floor lamps and attachable grow lamps. I ordered some full daylight spectrum CFLs to put in the lamps and the grow lights I attached to the lamps (the grow lights came with full daylight spectrum incandescents). So I think the light issue will be taken care of but my question surrounds the amount of time they should get light. I'm not comfortable with leaving the lamps on during the day while no one is home so I bought some timers. My thought is to have them turn on around 5:30 or 6 pm right when I get home from work and then leave them on for 10 hours and then shut off in early morning around 4am. This begs the question though of do these plants need darkness? If I leave the curtains open all day (even though its a North NW window and light isn't good) and then hit them with 10 hours of unnatural light will it be too much or will they not get enough darkness? Under this scenario they would get no light from 4am to 6am. I can always keep the curtains closed during the day and thus they would get 10 (or 12 if need be) hours of unnatural daylight during "night time" hours. Any rhoughts? Does it matter? Lastly, I have good buds going on the Meyer lemon and large lime tree and am planning on self pollinating them. Do the buds need to be a certain size? I haven't seen anything about this just the basic "take pollen from the anthers and put on the stigma." I attached some photos. The first is of my larger lemon tree buds. The rest are of my Meyer lemon tree.

Not sure if this will help you as it hasn't been exposed to any frost The odd red line areas might not callus over as easily as a hard normal cut if it does you can assist the callused area (cuts) by attempting to use a finger pruning and peel the brown tip off with applying a little force.

Limiting the volume of soil limits the size of the plant. Limiting the size of the plant limits the amount of peppers it can sustain. Fish fertilizer is very high in N relative P and K and this triggered the plant for foliar growth, but too much N can prevent the plant from switching to setting fruit when it normally would. People who choose to overwinter generally do so by yanking the plants out of their pots, cutting both the root ball and the top growth way back, sticking that into a smaller pot for the winter, then repotting into a bigger pot for the growing season. Your chosen pot might do for a slower growing C. chinense like a habanero or a reaper, but cayenne varieties grow fast and big and need a lot of root for roots. Worm castings contain very limited amounts of nutrients. Both they and bone meal will break down in potting soil, but it will take a long, long time because both depend on microbial action to do so. Microbial activity is either limited or missing entirely from containers due to the highly fluctuating environment. The container gardening forum here has lots of discussion about good choices of container fertilizers, both organic and synthetic. The general consensus is that the purely organic route is possible but takes more effort and money. I have similar problems with tap water. If you fill the watering can, bucket, whatever and let it sit out, uncovered, for a day or so a lot of the bad stuff will offgas. Cheaper than buying bottled water, which is way less regulated than your tap water and may contain who knows what... Good call on the garden soil, though. The stuff tends to compact in containers and will starve the roots of oxygen. Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) are one of the myths that the Internet (and the seller) loves to propagate as a miracle fix-all cure, but in reality they may only solve one problem (magnesium deficiency) that is really not all that commonly occurring to begin with. Foliar application does no good because the plants do not absorb magnesium through their leaves. There's a good discussion over at the Growing Tomatoes forum right now about the kind of damage ill-informed application of Epsom salts can do to tomato plants. Pepper plants are in the same family as tomatoes. If you do a bit of research you can find any one of many good fertilizers that contain more than enough magnesium. Not trying to harsh your mellow, bring you down, etc., just speaking from experience so that you can avoid making the kinds of mistakes I, and many others, have already made.