If your African violets take too much of your time, then you are giving them way too much attention. Honestly, I barely acknowledge mine and they are gorgeous year round. I think too many people want African violets to seem like they need special care. They don't. I have dropped, crushed, over-watered, under-watered, drenched in hot sunlight, left in the dark, and failed to re-pot my African violets for years at a time. They still reward me with blooms whether or not I deserve it. I have heat intolerance from multiple sclerosis, so I keep my apartment cool (most would say COLD) year round. I drop everything, including the African violets. I might take the dust off their leaves once a year. In the winter I hardly ever turn on the heat, so it's normally at 45-55 degrees; I tell people I keep it warm enough in the winter so the African violets don't freeze. In the summer the temperature cannot go higher than 70 degrees or lose my right leg, right hand and most of my cognitive abilities; at times the air conditioner has the apartment down to 60 degrees all day. I don't provide them with any special lighting. I water them when I am physically able to lift the jug. I always add food to the water, because with my short-term memory loss can never worry about a feeding schedule. I have mine in pots with holes in the bottom sitting on top of a tray of aquarium stones. If the stones look dry, I water the stones. My African violets LOVE living here! They have healthy foliage and gorgeous flowers. In the wild, no one fusses over them. They get gnawed on and stepped on. African violets acclimate very well to many different conditions. They survived before people came along to take care of them. It's a shame to get rid of plants you have cared for. Just stick them somewhere and forget about them. If they look like they are wilted, water them.

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'd probably lean towards finding a new spot for it -- but with highs in the 90s, it's not the best time to be moving it. Figs in the ground generally don't need fertilizer, expecially N or any application after late spring, but you might giving that a try. You might want to dig up a few roots to see if they appear normal or whether they have nodules, in which case it might be infected with nematodes (see this thread). Nematodes might explain its poor performance. If infested you might want to stick to potted figs (you'd need to buy a new plant, and use a commercial potting mix, and don't set the pot directly on the soil where the nematodes could migrate up.)

Signet, remember you are also a zone 6 which means that you get frost a lot later than we do in zone 2 or 3. So, being that replanting the iris needs to be with enough time to get the iris re-established before freeze up here in zone 2 - 3, that means that replanting should be done no later than the end of August. A friend of mine has hundreds and hundreds of iris here in the Brandon area and that is the advice that she gives. There is a problem though when buying irises in the fall here on the prairies because the Ontario and BC growers will not send out the irises to the nurseries and box stores until about the middle of September and then it is usually only the tall German irises and the occasional SDB that are sent. They do not ideally have time to get established before our freezeups. So, now, when buying some of these, I have grown them over in the house for the winter and planted them out into the garden in the spring. Personally, so far, I have never had a problem here with irises heaving out of the ground. I rather think that I would be unable to stomp them back into the ground because once my ground is frozen, it is frozen. A friend of mine lives in Dartmouth and she does have perennials heave out of the ground in the winter. I know that she is rather frustrated sometimes when it happens. Do you feel the same way Signet? I have had problems with deer coming and pulling/nibbling on the iris just before freezeup and thus leaving the iris on the top of the soil for the winter, but that is a different story. Brenda