Bringing a tree home

The gift juniper, the instructional example that has run through this course, arrives on December 20, bought at a supermarket in mid-December. Its tag reads “INDOOR BONSAI · Juniper · Water twice a week · Bright indirect light · Keep away from drafts · Easy care.” Its new owner sets it on the warm windowsill above the radiator in the west balcony apartment and starts a list: water it twice a week, buy proper bonsai soil, and maybe some fertilizer to help it settle in.

You know by now that the tag is unreliable (Lesson 2), that this tree belongs outdoors (Lesson 3), and that its pot has no drainage hole and a surface glued shut (Lesson 7). That still does not say what to do first. Hard frosts are forecast, the root zone may be sitting in water, and nobody has confirmed what the tree is. Some of this cannot wait a day; some would be made worse by hurrying. This lesson puts the whole course in order for a new tree: the first hour, the first week, and the first month.

A move is already a stress

Even a healthy tree arrives under some stress. It grew used to one kind of light, temperature, humidity, and watering; the trip home may have meant a cold car or days in a dark box; and now all of that changes at once. Course 01, Lesson 14 showed that stresses add up, so the first weeks have a simple aim: remove the stresses you can, add none you can avoid, and learn what you have. Every choice in this lesson is one of three kinds of move:

• Act now on what gets worse by the hour or the day: a root zone sitting in water or bone dry, frost or a heat wave tonight, a tie cutting into the bark, a pest you can pick off.
• Find out more about what is still unknown: what the tree is, how it was grown, what a sign on a leaf means, whether pests show up on a second look.
• Hold off on elective work (repotting and root work, pruning, wiring and styling, and fertilizing) until the tree has settled and you know what it is.

A good arrival plan uses all three. Acting on everything stacks stress on a tree that has just moved; holding off on everything leaves standing water and frost free to do their damage.

Start an arrival record

Before you change anything, write down what you have. An arrival record is a dated note made the day a tree arrives; a notebook page or a phone note with photos is enough. Record:

• the date, the source, and the price, with the receipt or nursery label;
• the tag or label, copied word for word, since even a wrong tag is a clue;
• its identity and how sure you are, such as “probably Juniperus procumbens ‘Nana’, not confirmed,” and whom you asked (Lesson 2);
• where and how it was grown, its provenance (Lesson 6), asked while you are still at the till;
• what is already in or on it, such as fertilizer pellets, wire, ties, or a cane;
• what the inspection finds, including “nothing found.”

Then photograph it before anything changes: the front, back, and both sides from the same height, plus close-ups of the foliage (tops and undersides), the trunk base, the surface, and the pot's underside.

The record is the baseline for every later check. Vigor is judged against the tree's own normal over time (Course 01, Lesson 14), and this tree's normal starts today. The record also gives anyone helping to identify the tree what they need, and if something goes wrong in a month, it shows whether the problem was there on day one (Course 07, Tree Health and Diagnosis).

Inspect before you change anything

A first inspection takes ten or twenty minutes, in good light, with a hand lens if you have one, a sheet of white paper, and a wooden chopstick (Lesson 7). Work from the top down, then the pot, then underneath it. The aim is to see and record, not to diagnose: a sign tells you where to look next, not what is wrong.

Foliage, shoots, and stems

Compare the foliage's color and density with what that kind of tree normally does in that season. A trident maple in mid-April should be opening fresh leaves. A juniper makes no new growth in winter, and many junipers turn bronze or purplish in the cold, a normal winter color (Course 01, Lesson 13). Note any brown or yellow foliage, and where it is, without deciding yet what it means. Treat green as a weak sign: a conifer can stay green for weeks after its roots begin to fail (Course 01, Lesson 14), so good-looking foliage goes in the record as “healthy so far.”

Then check the stems for a bamboo cane, plastic ties, a wired-on label, or a twist of wire. Anything already pressing into the bark comes off today. A tie cannot stretch as the trunk thickens through the growing season, so within weeks it cuts deeper, crushing the living layers under the bark and, if it rings the trunk, girdling it (Course 01, Lesson 3). Snip it rather than pulling it, so the bark does not tear.

Pests and where they hide

Look where pests hide: leaf undersides along the veins, leaf axils and soft shoot tips, inside juniper foliage tufts, bark crevices, the trunk base, and under the pot's rim and the pot itself. The signs are the ones Lesson 6 used at the sales bench: fine webbing with speckled foliage (typical of spider mites), sticky, shiny patches of honeydew, small brown bumps that do not brush off (scale insects), white cottony patches (mealybugs), and clusters of small, soft insects on shoot tips (aphids). Repeat the tap test over white paper, too: debris lies still, and mites crawl. At home, with time to look underneath, add two checks:

• Below the leaves. Honeydew is a sugary liquid left by sap-feeding insects such as scale insects, mealybugs, and aphids, and it drips, so sticky patches often show first on lower leaves, the surface, or the pot rim. Look for the insects on the shoots above. Left in place, honeydew can grow a black film of sooty mold.
• Under the pot. Ragged leaves and silvery slime trails are typical of slugs and snails, which often hide under the pot by day.

Every sign here is “typical of” a pest, not proof of one. Honeydew shows that something is feeding on sap, not which insect. Record what you see, photograph it, and remove what you safely can by hand, such as a slug; confirming a pest and choosing a treatment belong to Course 07, Tree Health and Diagnosis. Spraying “just in case” tells you nothing and adds stress, and spraying before you know the pest risks using the wrong product.

Surface, pot, and drainage

Next, the container. Is the surface open mix that you can see and test, or sealed under glued stones that shed water and hide the root zone? Note weeds (pull them gently), moss, and any small round fertilizer pellets, which are slow-release fertilizer from the grower and matter before anyone thinks of feeding. Then lift or tilt the pot and look underneath. Is there a drainage hole at all? White root tips at the holes are a good sign of growing roots (Course 01, Lesson 2). If the pot sits inside a decorative outer pot, lift it out and look for standing water.

Glued stones, a pot with no hole, and an outer pot holding water are the three common problems, and Lesson 7 covers the proportionate fix for each, including slip-potting, which moves the whole root ball, undisturbed, into a pot that drains. Today's job is to find out which you have, because a root zone that stays waterlogged needs fixing within days, not months (Course 01, Lesson 7).

The root zone

Check the moisture where the roots are. Lift the pot: heavy for its size means wet, and light means dry. Push a wooden chopstick deep into the root zone, partway between trunk and rim, and leave it a few minutes; wood that comes out dark, cool, and damp has found moisture (Course 01, Lesson 2). Tilt a pot with no hole over a sink: water that trickles out was standing in the bottom. And smell the surface. Earthy is normal; sour or rotten suggests roots short of air, which makes a drainage fix more urgent.

Then the check, not the tag, decides the watering. If the root zone is dry, water slowly until water runs from the holes, then let it drain. If it is wet, add nothing and check again tomorrow. Course 03, Watering and Daily Observation, turns this into a routine.

Keep a new tree apart for a few weeks

One clean inspection does not prove that a tree is clean. Spider mites and young scale insects can be too few or too small to see on day one, their eggs are smaller still, and in a warm room a few can become many within a week or two. So growers practice quarantine: keeping a new arrival apart from their other plants for a few weeks, where practical, while they look again.

Apart need not mean far: another room, the other end of the balcony, or a few steps from the bench, so that foliage does not touch. Handle the new tree last, and rinse your hands and tools afterward. Repeat the hand lens and tap test every few days, then weekly. The tree joins the others after several clean checks, not a set number of days; a pest found in week three restarts the count. In a one-window apartment, a few steps of distance and closer checks still help.

Plan from where it grew

Where a tree spent the last few months matters as much as what it is, because its leaves and its cold readiness were built there. Ask the seller, and plan from the answer:

• Outdoors in the open at a local nursery: it is used to your sun, wind, and spring weather, so it needs no slow step-up into the light. Its newest leaves are still soft, though, and a late frost can damage them. (If it grew under shade cloth instead, step it up into full sun as you would a greenhouse tree.)
• A heated greenhouse or a warm shop: its leaves grew in gentle light and still air, and it has built little or no cold acclimation. A temperate tree from here moves outdoors gradually, bright shade first and more sun over one to two weeks or more, with shelter on frost nights (Lesson 3). For a tropical tree such as the ficus, any window is a step down from the greenhouse, so it gets the brightest spot you have, and a few leaves may yellow and drop as it adjusts.
• A box in the mail: after days in the dark, unpack it at once, check the root zone, and give it a few days of bright shade before full sun.
• Unknown, like the gift juniper: assume it has been kept warm for weeks and has no cold readiness, even if it grew outdoors before that.

Check the weather before you place it

Then check the forecast for tonight and the next few days:

• Frost, for a tree in soft new leaf or one that has been living warm: a night under a roof in a cool place that stays above freezing, such as an unheated garage or shed on a night of light frost, and back out in the morning; not weeks in a warm house, and not a frost pocket, a low spot where cold air pools on still, clear nights (Lesson 5).
• Winter, for a temperate tree from a warm room or shop, like the gift juniper: neither hard frost nor the warm room for the season, but a cool, bright, frost-free room first, then outdoors in steps as the weather allows, with its roots protected from hard freezes (Course 06, Seasonal Care and Timing).
• A heat wave: bright shade for the first few days, the pot shaded, and moisture checks morning and afternoon (Lesson 5).
• Strong wind: a sheltered spot and a secured pot, since a tall tree in a light nursery pot topples easily.

These cases are in the Northern Hemisphere, in the course's example climate, where the last spring frost usually comes in late April, the first autumn frost in mid-October, and south-facing windows get the most sun. In the Southern Hemisphere, swap north and south, and shift the months by half a year.

First actions: fix what cannot wait

Put it all together, and the first actions are usually a short list:

1. Water only if the root zone needs it, thoroughly, and let it drain.
2. Fix drainage: tip out standing water, empty an outer pot, and within days slip-pot a tree out of a pot with no hole (Lesson 7).
3. Remove anything cutting in, such as a tie or a wire label loop.
4. Remove what you can by hand, such as a slug, and pull weeds.
5. Place it for where it grew and for the weather, apart from your other plants.

Everything else waits until the tree has settled and you know what it is. A pot that drains is not urgent, whatever mix it holds, and repotting is root work for the right stage and a deliberate plan (Course 11, Repotting and Root Development); slip-potting out of a pot with no hole is a smaller job, done now because the drainage cannot wait. Pruning, wiring, and styling need a tree that is growing well (Courses 08 to 10). And fertilizing, the most tempting of all, does not help a tree settle.

Checks for the first day, week, and month

Before you walk away, write the next checks into the record:

• Tomorrow: a chopstick check, and a look at the foliage in its new spot. A new place dries a pot at a new rate.
• In about a week: the forecast and any move it calls for, any tie mark or wound, and the leaves, for scorch or frost damage after the change.
• Over the first few weeks: the hand lens and tap test, every few days and then weekly, until several clean checks let it join your other plants.
• In about a month: signs that it has settled. Growth that looks normal for its kind and the season (in winter, foliage holding its color), and a root zone that dries steadily, rather than staying wet for days or drying out in hours.

If you will be away, show your helper the chopstick check, so they water by the root zone, not by the calendar.

Worked example: the gift juniper on December 20

On December 20, the gift juniper's owner works through the checks and finds:

• Record: a supermarket, mid-December, growing history unknown; the tag copied; probably Juniperus procumbens ‘Nana’, not confirmed; the full photo set.
• Foliage and stems: evenly green, no new growth (normal in winter), no ties.
• Surface, pot, and root zone: a glued crust over a pot with no hole. The pot is heavy, a chopstick pushed through the gap at the rim comes out wet along its whole length, and water trickles out when the pot is tipped over the sink. The smell is earthy.
• Pests: none found with the hand lens or the tap test. Two houseplants live in the living room.
• Weather and places: hard frosts for several nights, down to about −9 °C (16 °F), then a milder spell after Christmas, for a tree that is not cold-acclimated. Besides the warm sill, there is a cool bedroom with a bright window and its radiator off, and the west balcony.

Sorted into the three kinds of move, the first-week plan reads:

Act now

• Move it to the cool, bright bedroom, away from the houseplants.
• Tip out the standing water, and add no more until the chopstick comes out only slightly damp.
• Within a few days, slip the root ball, undisturbed, into a slightly larger pot with drainage holes, then soak off the crust in pieces once the new pot can drain (Lesson 7).

Find out more

• Its identity: ask the giver which shop it came from, ask the shop for the botanical name, and show the photos to a nursery, an extension service, or a local bonsai club.
• Whether pests turn up on a second and third look.
• When the milder spell arrives, for its first steps outdoors.

Hold off

• Repotting into bonsai substrate and any root work (Course 11), pruning, wiring, and styling (Courses 08 to 10), and fertilizing (Course 05).

Check again

• Tomorrow: the chopstick, and the foliage in the cool room.
• In a week: the forecast, to start moving it outdoors in steps during the milder spell.
• Over the first few weeks: the hand lens and tap test, every few days and then weekly.
• In a month: foliage color holding, and a root zone that dries between waterings.

The owner is away for a week of work travel in January, so before the trip they show the friend who will water how to use the chopstick. Each line of the plan answers something the owner found, and each will change as the checks come in.

Three arrivals, step by step

The first hour with a new tree walks three arrivals through the same eight checks. Under New arrival, the Gift juniper comes first and follows the worked example, so use it to check yourself. Then try the Trident maple (Outdoor nursery, mid-April), at the small backyard, and the Ficus (Greenhouse shop, October), at the bright window.

At each step, read What you find and answer the question. A right answer is tagged Act now, Find out more, or Hold off; Reconsider explains what an answer missed, and you can change it. When all eight steps are answered, the Arrival record sets Your choices beside the course's recommended first-week plan and its Next checks. Before each tree, guess which steps will be Act now and which Hold off.

The pattern was different for each tree. The trident maple, grown outdoors nearby, needed no slow start in the light, but it needed water, its tie snipped, a slug removed, and one night in the unheated garage; only its draining pot was left alone. The ficus was almost the reverse: no water yet, because it was damp below its dry-looking gravel, but the brightest place on the sill, an emptied outer pot, and a closer look at sticky leaves and bumps typical of scale insects, not yet confirmed. Across all three, feeding, repotting, and spraying were never right on arrival, and every plan turned on two facts you could not see on the tree: where it had grown, and the season and weather it arrived into.

The first-week plan

This lesson completes Choosing a Tree and Creating Its Growing Environment: a place read before a purchase, a tree identified and matched to it, a healthy start chosen, and a first month planned. Quiz 2 brings the whole course together in a final case. After it, Course 03, Watering and Daily Observation, now being prepared, will turn tomorrow's chopstick check into a routine.