@Matt Gleason - Hi, you and I are in the same climate, I'm at the IL-WI border, just south of you. Work on the ficus now, while it is hot. Ficus go dormant most of the autumn-winter-spring around here, unless you have a warm greenhouse. So chop your ficus now, will it is active.
Where do you plan to winter your maple? If outside, with minimal protection, I would just let it grow until spring.
If you have a protected spot where temps stay between 32F and 40F that you could winter the maple you could get away with a lot of work.
Trees thst are just recovering from work in August in our zone 5b won't have time to fully mature and be ready for - 20F subzero weather. Maples have been a problem for me so I recommend going slow with it.
Personally I would only do a partial trim, less than a third of foliage, in spring, and repot to a 15 x 15 x 4 inch deep tray. Let it establish a root system capable of supporting a lot of foliage in the training tray first. It may take a year or two, then when growing vigorously, in 2018 would I do the hard chop. Slow go approach, but for me maples don't seem very vigorous.
that's what I'd do
ok so here is the deal I went bargain hunting and found these 2 today the ficus marked down to 25$ from 99 and the jap to 30 from 60 so I had to buy them haha being new to this these are my pre bonsai trunk chop subjects I was hopin to cut the ficus into 3 parts and try to root the 2 upper halves not a huge loss of the tops fail and the maple I was planning to chop also what would be the best time of year to chop these what's my next step help please!!
