Buying dormant maples and shipping to different zone

Bonsai Nut

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I am curious about other people's experiences with buying dormant JM and then shipping them to a warmer zone. Last year I bought about 12 maples from Oregon in Jan/Feb and when they arrived they almost immediately came out of dormancy. All survived the ordeal. However about 10 years ago I tried to move a larger JM from Chicago down here, and it popped weak buds in January, and then weakened and died. How have the rest of you done?
 
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When I moved my trees from western oregon to eastern oregon nearly all of my trees started to open about 2 months ahead of the locals, I lost 2 JM's and about 5 other trees since every night it still was getting down to 20F.
 

Tachigi

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Greg, My best guess is that the maple relocated to Cali did not have enough time for dormancy. Versus maples that came from Oregon, which appear to have been moved later from an environment that was a bit milder and probably better suited for the transition at that time of year.

JM need approximately 1000 hours of dormancy (about 42 days). I have found that some require a bit more some a bit less depending on there geographic origins. This also may account for why your Oregon maples did better than your Chi-Town maple. I am almost willing to bet if the Chicago maple had been put in some sort of cool/cold storage for a couple of weeks that the results may have been different.
 

bisjoe

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Bare root dormant trees can be stored in the refrigerator for a few weeks to keep them dormant.
 

Bonsai Nut

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Bare root dormant trees can be stored in the refrigerator for a few weeks to keep them dormant.

You must have a big refrigerator :) Joking aside, I know of a greenhouse in the mountains outside of LA where people take their cold hardy bonsai to overwinter them. They drive up and pick them up in the Spring after they have had a good sleep.
 

Tachigi

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You must have a big refrigerator
Actually Greg that isn't a joke. In Sarasota there is a service that not only cares for the snow birds trees. They actually offer a dormancy service for some of those trees that have made there way down south, talk about growing out of zone. They have several very large walk in reefers that you can have your bonsai stored in at the poultry sum of 150 bucks a month:eek:
 
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