Yes, you can repot this time of year, and you should do it if the garden center pots have no drainage and if the plant has outgrown the pot. Use a new pot with a hole in the bottom and your best bet is commercial planting soil.

If you are using a hanging pot, be sure to keep your fuchsia well-watered this summer. I don't know about the snapping branches.

I'm sure you'll do very well with your new gardening hobby. Pay attention to how much sun or shade a plant likes, and also the amount of water it likes, and you'll be fine. You can feed periodically during the summer too.

Good luck.

Do you have a lot of spent blooms or seed-pods that could be weighting down the plant? If so, you might try removing them. (The seed pods are the small, green bulges directly above the blooms. If the blooms fall off, the seed pod will remain. It'll grow in size and get darker in color.) Take off any old, dried up leaves as well.

If this isn't the problem, then I'm not sure what to recommend. You could alway trim the branches, though I know from experience that this may be extremely distressing for the gardener if the plant is blooming heavily. Nevertheless, trimming the branches will encourage new growth, which in turn will develop more blooms....

Of course, though I've had 50+ fuchsia for the past couple of years, I've never had this problem before! For this reason, I'll apologize right off the bat in case my diagnosis is totally off....

Good luck, and please keep us posted!

-Crazy

I have a couple of fuchsia books and have read that some varieties will snap from the weight of flowers.