I'm new to this forum and upon seeing'serissa' I had to read your post. I'm a beginner myself at bonsai and have been able to make a miniature tree from one of my serissa plants simply by keeping the branches cut on a regular basis.......the trunk now is about 1/2" dia. It has taken me about 4 yrs to do this and the plant lives outside year round......most bonsai plants prefer outside. I do realize if you're in a colder zone it would need some protection. I don't know how to post pics here but if you would like I"ll gladly send you a picture by email. Sharon

They'll very likely still harden off OK. Thousands of years of evolution has included many wet falls that thinned out the genotypes that aren't adapted. Hardiness in apples builds early in fall. They can survive severe cold before the leaves all drop. Just leave them be unless it gets real dry. Then water good before the ground freezes. Always go into winter with moist soil. After a certain point in mid fall water doesn't cause growth or hurt hardiness. But dry soil in winter can kill the roots by allowing them to freeze. Don't strip off the leaves. That's done sometimes to compensate for lack of chilling. But it's the worst thing you could do to your trees right now. They need to build carbohydrates as antifreeze for the cold. Stripping the leaves would deplete carbohydrates and encourage even more growth as they try to replace the leaves. This post was edited by fruitnut on Thu, Aug 8, 13 at 11:28

You do not need to be above the tree to prune. You could have a branch that is 10' tall and cut it at 4'. You certainly wouldn't need to get on a ladder to make the 4' cut just because the branch is 10'. All the trees you mention except for the cherry, which you will probably kill doing what you want because they don't handle constant or heavy pruning well (and it sounds like you are going to cut a large central leader to make an open vase, which is why my old cherry tree split about 15 years after I had that idea), and the guava (which I just don't know about) fruit on last year's wood. Once you get your basic tree structure down your pruning will be replacing old branches when they get too big and heading back new branches to encourage fruiting and strength. You can bend the branches down to do the heading back and the branch replacement will be done at whatever level you decide your fruiting branches will come from. That level could be radiating from a central leader or it could be a system of scaffolds. I see a lot of overgrown "new wood" fruit trees and the reason is people didn't train them with the idea of branch replacement and to continue getting fruit they need to let the tree continue to get larger and larger. Let's say you decide your base will be cut at 4' and you will allow the trees to go no more than 10'. If the trees grow 12" a year or you head them back so they grow no more than 12" a year that means you will be replacing branches every 6 years. I don't know about zone 9 but 6 years is not a unmanageable branch. If it is you could decide to replace every 4 or 5 year branch and have an 8'-9' tree. If you are really stuck on having your trees only be 6' (which like I said above, there is no pruning reason to have to have them at head height to prune them since you will be removing well below the final height and can bend whips down to head them back) you would be cutting them off after every 2nd year. I'm not sure your trees would go for that, they may decide they don't have enough tree compared to root to bother trying to populate and growing tree is more important. I have a McIntosh that hates being espaliered to 5' and it's always trying to grow more tree instead of getting heavy with fruit. You may have to do some root pruning to make them satisfied with 6' of tree or do some other stress/extra dwarfing techniques to cause them to bear heavy so they don't have the energy to make more tree.

There are lots of differences besides vegetation: As a person born and bred in Baltimore ( 40 years in NH and MA) I never ever miss the humidity of a DC/Balto summer. It is insufferable. However, east coast MA & NH have equally hot spells and humidity, just not week after week after week.. As you know, Md and DC are 4 season climates....there is certainly spring (long) summer (hellish) fall (just fine) and winter ( just not so snowy so often so long) You would not miss the drivers who have never learned to drive in snow. On the other hand, you'll have to learn. You will lose two months of real warm weather gardening and the long lovely springs which encourage azaleas. New England springs are rather short and violent.....here today, gone tomorrow. But beautiful, for sure. Oh yes, it can snow on May 1. You will miss reliably delicious tomatoes you can grow yourself, the operative word is reliably and soft shell crabs ....real crabcakes. (though you have to search as far and wide down there as you do here for the authentic lump crab) You can get Bud here. Maples we have, but the oaks down your way are fine. I miss the southern graciousness and friendliness that linger in more southern areas. Many parts of New England are more racially segregated than the greater metro area. I continued to be startled by that whenever I went home or visited DC. Maybe I wax nostalgic and inaccurate, maybe times have changed.....but around here one rarely "stops" by for a beer or a drink after work, people don't "drop in" or "drop by" . At least where I live, nobody hangs out on their front steps or front yard, though you'll certainly get a wave from the neighbors. Sure, we chat when we get to know each other, but I honestly think people are more reserved here. Maybe in part because we're holed up so long in winter. I feel very homesick right now.