| How you go about it is not particularly important, as long as you follow a few simple guidelines. * Allow your plant to remain outdoors in the fall and be naturally moved toward dormancy by decreasing day length and chill. * Once the tree has lost its foliage and entered dormancy, a short period of chill (a week or less) is sufficient to release the tree from true dormancy, and it will pass unnoticed into a period of quiescence. Keep the tree as cold as you can (w/o subjecting it to extreme cold) for as long as you can into the spring. Light has no bearing on when the tree breaks bud in the spring - this aspect of the tree's physiology is driven by soil temperature. * Once the tree has started pushing foliage, you'll want to get the tree into as much light as possible. For me, this entails putting trees on a large wagon and moving them in and out as temperatures allow. Usually out in the AM and back under cover at night until danger of frost is past. * Trees requiring repotting and root-pruning should be attended to during the quiescent period in early spring, prior to bud movement. Soil choice is very important in ensuring that the tree has at least the opportunity to grow at or very near its genetically programmed level of vigor, as well as ensuring good vitality. Vitality and vigor are distinctly different. It does little good, and depending on what you are using for fertilizer - might do considerable harm, if you fertilize when soil temperatures are below 55(13)*. The plant may not be growing, and ammonium toxicity from fertilizers deriving their N from either organic sources (various 'meals' - blood, cottonseed, alfalfa .....) or urea (most soluble fertilizers like MG, Peter's, Schultz, others) is a very common problem, even though it almost always goes undiagnosed. If you do apply early fertilizers, use a fertilizer that derives more than 50% of its N from nitrate sources or simply withhold until temperatures are more conducive to growth. I would discourage you from trying to nurse the trees through the winter indoors. Unless you have a sophisticated light set-up, your tree will be using more energy than it is producing - draining its batteries, so to speak. If something happens that causes the tree to lose a notable fraction of its foliage, it can leave the tree severely weakened and playing catch-up for the entire summer. Even if it doesn't lose foliage, the tree will go into spring weakened. Trees kept cold and resting long into spring will, in almost every case, surpass their counterparts that limped through the winter indoors in growth and development long before summer's end. Al | 
