What Not To Do...

will*law

So, as most of you know, the northeast has had ridiculously cold weather the past couple of weeks. Ithaca, NY, where I am, has been hoving around the zero to 10 below (Fahrenheit, about -18 to 23 C) - range the past two weeks. Wind chill factors have been much higher.

I generally keep my trees on a south facing balcony. temperatures have been hovering around the 20s at the lowest according to my trusty min-max thermometer. However, with the frigid temperatures I became somewhat worried and brought my trees inside. I thought it was going to be brief. A day or two - not a big deal at all.

Well, it stretch on and on. Now temps are back up again, and most everything looks just like it did before I brought stuff in.

Unfortunately, that is not the case for everything. I'm not exactly sure what happened - all the other trees are safely dormant. My prized (but nowhere near finished) cork bark elm is not.

It will be fine, I expect. I'm going to keep it inside under an HID light... but... whoops.

Will

Attached Images

budscropped.jpg (19.0 KB, 148 views)

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will*law

One angle of the whole tree. The pot is a 12 inch bulb pan, fwiw.

Will

Attached Images

buds - color corrected and cropped.jpg (45.1 KB, 146 views)

bonsaial1

The magic no. is 60 degrees F. If the tree is at these temps. for more than 5 days, the sap starts to flow. When the sap starts to flow, it is like the rollar coaster cresting the large starting hill. It will just continue to fall over the edge and grow. If you were to put it out side, it would probably just go dormant again, but you would lose all the tender buds that swelled with the higher temps. Sometimes the branchs will not respond with buds till later in the year with a false start like this. Good luck, Bonsai-al

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