Photo Of The Week: Fall Color Time

This photo is at my former Maryland home, taken November 5, 2006. It’s a Laceleaf Japanese Maple, Acer palmatum variety dissectum ‘Waterfall.‘ A plain green cultivar, but with pretty golden fall color. I grew this as a container plant. It was potted in 2000, and it was still in the same soil in the same pot when we moved in 2019, at which point I gifted it to my coworker Jennifer who I believe took pity on it and planted it out in the ground.

If you want a container plant and you don’t like fussing around with replanting it every year, this could work for you, too. It’s like growing a bonsai, only a larger plant in a larger pot.

First, you need a “frost proof” container that won’t crack when the soil in the pot freezes in the winter. For sun exposure, several hours or more of sun in the morning, and shade in the hot afternoon are ideal. (Japanese maples often suffer scorching on the edges of the leaves in afternoon summer sun.) Mine stayed outside in the winter, but I moved them off the deck and onto the ground so the soil temperature wouldn’t vary as rapidly as it would if they were up in the air on the deck. I fertilized once in the spring with Osmocote slow-release fertilizer.

My biggest issue was “Acts of God,” as the insurance people would say. A hazard of a shady location under trees is the occasion tree branch falling onto the tree and breaking a branch off of the maple. Also, if the branches of the maple get too large and heavy, the trunk may split, so a bit of pruning in winter once a year to shape the branches is helpful.

By the way, the orange-colored maple in the back is a Full Moon maple, which was planted in the ground. A beautiful plant. Sadly, after about ten years it died over the winter, for no reason I could ascertain at the time.