Hi trudii, since you haven't received a response yet and I am in your climate, I'll let you know my opinion. If the area you are talking about is unheated but may get some ambient heat from the surrounding condos, I'd probably leave your maples in place until late November. Usually by then temps will have dropped to a point where the plant is dormant but not low enough where there is damage to the plants. Also hopefully your storage area temps will have dropped low enough to keep the plants dormant. [To be sure the temps are low enough in the storage area, I'm guessing below 40 degrees F.,(others correct me if I'm wrong), you can use one of those remote weather station thermometers. They cost about $20 and show inside temp and temp. and humidity of the area where the remote is.] If temps are higher than this, I don't think keeping them in a rubbermaid container is the solution, because on sunny days the temps in the container will rise and cause serious problems with your trees. Alternatively you may want to find the largest container your exterior space will allow and "heal" the pots inside of it with the pots covered with additional soil or mulch inside of it with the dormant plants above the soil or mulch line. As an additional layer of protection you could place stakes at the corners of the container and wrap burlap around the stakes,protecting them from the wind on all sides but leaving things open on the top. One year grafts are tough in Zone 5 even under ideal conditions. I hope these suggestions give you the best chance of survival with your very specific conditions. Good luck, Dan

I agree with Jean - a perfectly normal reaction to a stressful weather situation. While Japanese maples are pretty easy to grow and do not usually have a lot of problems, growing them in SoCal can be a challenging undertaking. That is a climate they are not overly fond of. I'd only recommend them for coastal communities, with adequate protection from intense afternoon sun and out of heavy winds (ie, Santa Ana's). And watch out for alkaline irrigation water and compensate for this appropriately. Other than attending to these issues, for your own sanity, don't sweat the small stuff :-) The loss of a few leaves, a little insect activity is NBD. If a LOT of crisping or leaf loss and you see major leaf damage from insects, then you can start getting a little concerned.

Just thought I would expand on what Christine said earlier about people driving up the price of online auctions and additionly what Mike has said. What is done by a couple of sellers mentioned thus far is that they pay as little as $5 to buy a 4" pot wholesale (This is also done by website sellers, but they offer a fixed price) and then either immediately or after growing them on for a season, they sell them at acution on ebay. Sometimes, a seller may have some stock plants of common nursery varieties the he grafts himself, but orders in the new plants he does not have stock plants for. So when we go into an auction, the value of that auction for a first year plant is in obtaining a very low price. Additionally, some sellers will ship at very reasonable prices, but others are much too high in my opinion. So when we drive the price of these often very small plants up, we pay nearly as much as we would from someone who sells maples though a hosted website (Wildwood, Mountain Maples, Eastwood). This is where I feel it is better to turn to a web-based nursery than persist with ebay auctions. Even those that have nurseries like Jherter and Nishikimaplesman choose to sell through ebay and the reason being is that more times than not, they will average higher prices in the auctions. Some will even fudge a bit to call a plant a two year tree when it is not. If we are going to spend $30-50 then we might as well establish with an online nursery that will guarantee their plants and is ethical enough to sell through a web-based business. As much as ebay wants us to feel it is a business, it is not! It can be enjoyable to buy from ebay in the winter when not much else is happening and I buy during the growing season also. But I also frequent local nurseries in Oregon. So in anycase, whether or not we buy from ebay, it is nice to have a balance between local sellers where we can go and see the trees and buying online. It is only in going to an actual nursery that we will learn about the plants and those that care enough to propagate them. Establishing an entire collection over ebay is something that I would not enjoy as I would miss the interaction with the growers and nurserymen who also love maples. Of course there are unfortunate areas of the country where local establishments are not accessible and thereby it is understandable to have to use online sellers only. There is something said for establishing relationships and I do not believe that will be done on ebay--it is about the money to be had by auctioning trees. As Mike said in different words, it is "Buyer Beware" and now with this thread, equally as interesting, "Seller Beware!" I have had equally good and bad experiences with almost every seller mentioned here so far, but I will say that Cedric (Bonsaibob) seems to know the most about maples and had the best communication practices--problem is that his enhanced photography seems to lead to a higher frequency of auctions where the price is driven up. There is no reason to pay those kind of prices unless we feel there is no other avenue to obtain the plant and we have to have it. MJH

Since you just revived this thread and I just noticed it, I would like to add another theory. The branches may have been damaged when the tree was transported and the wounds only became noticeable weeks later when the tissue had died and became brown. I wonder if it was moved in the back of an open truck and the branches were rubbing on something as the wind whipped them around. That would explain why the damage is on the outermost branches of only one side of the tree.