“It’s unnatural!”
It seems like I haven’t thought this out at all. Every bit of advice I’m getting from internet forums now is that I should have started this in the spring. It’s like the old joke about someone asking directions and being told that they shouldn’t start their journey from here!
The basic problem is that Japanese Maple trees drop their seeds in the autumn, they lie dormant for the winter and then in the spring they start to grow, this continues through the summer. In the autumn they begin to slow down again and in the winter they enter a period of dormancy which continues until the following spring. This dormancy period is essential to the trees, maybe something like sleep to us.
What I have done is to start the germination process towards the end of summer. As one person put it to me on one forum: “When they sprout and start to get going it will be time for bed.” In other words there won’t be enough light for them to continue to grow and they will start going to sleep without having built up sufficient resources to survive. And since they’ll be inside instead of outside in the natural world they won’t get a proper sleep.
Another poster expressed doubt that the seeds will sprout at all since they have been dried out for so long as mine obviously have been.
There is some hope though. If they sprout I have a very bright fluorescent desk lamp which I could use to supply artificial light to the sproutlings during the winter and get them through to the springtime. By which time I hope to have garden space ready to take them outside.
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Internet forums visited:
Bonsai Help. Talk Bonsai Forum http://www.bonsaihelp.co.uk/forum-1.html
The Helpful Gardener. Bonsai Forum http://www.helpfulgardener.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=1
