Chinese Elm indoor lighting

[linlaoboo]

sorry I misunderstood your location. SC is alot warmer than us up here still. I gotta worry about my chinese elm that hasn't come out of dormancy yet. Will scratch the bark tomorrow to see if it's still green under neath. I bought mine from a local green house 4 years ago and winter before last I left it outside and it lost the top half of the tree. This past winter I left it outside since spring and let it go dormant then stored it in a dark outdoor closet until March and until now, still nothing =(

[Geniusdudekiran]

No, it was my fault for not disambiguating

So I should be okay? What about in the summer heat, when it'll get well above 90?

[kdodds]

Chinese Elms are pretty tolerant of outdoor conditions. Check out the USDA Zone information. Off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure they're fine in zones 4-9, but maybe even a wider range.

[Geniusdudekiran]

So, now that it's outside and I've dosed some insecticidal soap (2 times so far, think that's all I need for now. Keeping a close, close eye though) yesterday and today mark the first day that it hasn't dropped ANY leaves at all!

[kdodds]

Congrats! Keep at it and by September it should be full of new branches, and amazingly full leaved. Under the right conditions, elms are weeds.

[Geniusdudekiran]

And since I now know that it was conditioned indoors in SoCal, I bring it in in the winter?

[TomM]

To me that is still a sticky question. My basic conception is that dormancy is brought about with cold dark conditions - like Winter. Here in the 'cold dark' North it is easy to provide. But in your much warmer location it is not.

Winter for you, and for the trees previous home (SoCal), is still cooler and darker (fewer hours of daylight) outdoors than in Summer. That's why Summer is considered the growing season and Winter is the 'resting' season. I don't get it that a hardy or semi-hardy tree should ever be brought indoors in the Winter for dormancy, unless the tree is going into a refrigerator or a root cellar. THAT might provide dormancy conditions.

My cellar offers a cool dark corner (crawl space) as a safe environment for elms, maples and hornbeams. But this is nothing like the inside of my house in Winter which is warm and dry - not at all good for dormancy conditions.

[kdodds]

^What he said. I'd leave it out.

[tomc]

I think the right winter quarfters for an elm in winter in the Carolina's will be in a protected place outdoors.