I finally got around taking some pics of my cold frame yesterday. Here it goes. The first pic is of the entire structure. It is made using 1 inch electrical conduits and canopy parts. It is covered in regular 4mil plastic. I doubled the plastic for strength for snow loads. It is held to the frame using spring clamps. On the ground they are held by 4x4 pressure treated lumber or garden lumber. It also keeps the plastic taut. The plastic is in 3 pieces - 2 for the ends and one big that wraps the long sides and the top. I take it down every spring and put it back in fall. It takes about half hour for two of us to do that. This has survived 12 years now. The plastic needs to be changed every 3 years or so. Here is a close up of the door/entrance at the peak. You can see the zipper that ends at the top. The entrance plastic is installed first and held to the frame inside using ropes and tarp clips. The top sheet is put last and held to frame using the spring clamps. To protect the plastic I just fold up old plastic pieces several times and then put the clamps. Here is an inside view with the bed of mulch. Most of the plants are quite young less than 4 years old. There are a few older "mother" plants for taking cuttings. A close up of the peak from inside. Hope that was helpful. As Al said light is not needed so a garage or shed is also a perfect place. I use this mainly for baby plants and some that are marginally hardy like Nandina, some varieties of jasmine, etc. Sometimes when I am not sure, I use this as an insurance against killing a potted plant outside. I also use this to double as early start with veges that are sprouted inside the house and then hardened off in the cold frame. Also note that do not bury ceramic or clay pots. They will crack pretty quick. I am way off the topic of this thread.

Prune only when dormant or not in a growth spurt if you are not JM experinced I'd suggest waiting til fall after leaf fall then you'd be ok ...the only way I know to "make a multi trunked tree is to butcher the thing doen to a nubbin and let it grow back wit a bunch of new brancheds that would beconme trunks ...I do not suggest doing that ...the form may be natural to your seedling but My insionct is that it its a fertilization prioblem and possibly too much shade... I am NOT a fertilizer expert but if others agree maybe someone would have an idea ... My other instinct is to tell you to plant that sucka out get it out of the pot pronto and plant it somewhere it get a little more sun and it may grow to a less "santa" form...David

Ha no problem qwade and good luck with your endeavor. I've been trying to get to the arboretum all summer (after it was recommended so highly by folks here and I then checked out the website, yowsa!) and will now have to settle for fall; the little ones kept me too busy. I did recently get my mom to agree to come with me and we have a rough goal of next week or the following. Isn't it a shame that more of us aren't in coupledoms where BOTH partners share the obsession?? It works both ways though-- I suppose I could try harder to develop a taste for football, auto mechanics or America's Got Talent but if you try harder, it's not much of an obsession now is it... For today, I am grateful that hubbie does all the heavy digging and lifting when I ask him to. He does enjoy planting and nursing grass seed in our bare patches, so I think there might be some hope for him yet. Time will tell... I giggled about "quicker ways" to kill these little maples. Picturing someone really attacking the poor things, furiously hacking at them or setting them on fire. I do see what Ken is saying as it seems that the colder-than-here pacific northwest is where so many of these mail order trees come from so I don't understand why we'd have problems here but your mention of the freeze/thaw seems a likely candidate. And we did have several days here last winter that were below 10degrees, I think a couple even below zero. Harford County is usually several degrees colder than Baltimore, sometimes as much as 10. And I second the ice damage- perhaps that was a bigger culprit to the deaths of the trees I heard about. I didn't personally lose any other than my little maple but my HUGE pine tree (of some sort, I def do not know my evergreens yet) lost like 8 major limbs! It looks so sad now, big ol' holes. Anyway, thanks for the info on the dormancy/no photosynthesis/no light needed. Boy does that seem obvious now. Think if I do need to move them, into the garage they will go. Then I won't have to worry about the sunroom getting to 42degrees (or whatever, hehe). Here's a pic of one of our huge evergreens. I didn't take it for this post--already had it in my folder-- so you can't see the entire tree.. and it isn't the one with the holes anyway. But there it is nonetheless. Maybe someone here knows what it is? I'm going to see now if you have any pics posted of your bonsai. That's much more than I can imagine taking on at this point in my life but I do always love to look at others'...

What kind of potting soil did you use? Was there a chance it dried out during that funky weather? I also live in the Seattle area and grow ALL my maples in containers. Several of them DID experience some drying and dying of foliage in the repeated heat waves simply because I neglected to water quickly enough!! We Puget Sounders are not accustomed to needing to water as early as April, which is typically a pretty wet month for us (and with much cooler temperatures)! Usually, a JM that has experienced some slight drought will releaf pretty rapidly. All of mine are doing great now and most have produce a second flush of foliage. But if the new guy was not yet established and dried out too much, it may have been more drought than it could tolerate. If it has survived you should see some swelling of new buds long the stems and even the start of new growth. Can you post any photos? Especially close ups of the stem/branch tips?