Lately I've been volunteering on weekends at a local garden center with about 2,500 bonsai trees spread among 3 connected greenhouses. They are very overgrown, and in need of a lot of TLC so the owners and I worked out something for me to get a nice discount on any purchases I make at the garden center in exchange for helping them get things straightened out in there. I am absolutely LOVING it.
Now, during my adventures in the greenhouses the last few weeks I have fallen in love with a maple. I've never kept a maple before, and I live in Ohio where there are plenty of maples growing outdoors. Now, this maple is a nice size and has nebari that keeps me up at night fantasizing about it (yeah I know, I'm a little twisted but hey the bonsai bug has bitten me hard). I have decided to purchase this maple as soon as I can scrape together the rest of the money for it.
The maple has been greenhouse kept for about the last 10 years or so, but the greenhouse it is in is regularly closed off from the rest of the greenhouses each fall so the temperature in there can be dropped to about 50 degrees during the winter. I haven't been around the maple I love long enough to see if it drops its leaves at that temperature. My question is, on a tree that has been kept in this manner for so many years....what the heck do I do once I purchase it and take it home? I have a cold frame I use for my Spruce, cypress, and junipers, as well as my zelkova...but these trees have always been used to the outdoors. How do I introduce the new maple to the great outdoors for fall and winter? I'm sure the greenhouse would have no problem letting me winter it there this year after I purchase it, but I'd rather bring it home.
Please excuse the long post, but out of all my trees this maple would be my pride and joy. It needs a lot of work, needs repotted badly, needs cleaned out...so it's far from completely presentable but my gosh...as a beginner I've never been so excited about the purchase of a tree in my first two and a half years as a beginner.
