How to save a outdoor bonsai kept indoors all winter?

I'm very new to bonsai, and made the mistake of keeping my Japanese maple indoors all winter. It is about a foot tall and was very healthy before. Now half of the leaves have fallen off and the other half don't look very good. One bud released a tiny sickly looking leaf. With winter at least four months away, what is the best thing to do to keep this maple alive?|||Maples need to go through their natural dormancy period, and you starved it from that. It almost had the equivalent of staying awake all night and now the plant is in overdrive.





Im also quite new to bonsai, but all I know is that you need to get it back to its regular cycle. Im not too sure how to go about doing this...but I just thought i'd put in what I know.





You should try contacting Bill Choat...he's a bonsai enthusiast who helped me online once. You might be able to find his name in yahoo answers since thats where I first found out about him.





GOOD LUCK!|||Rob mentions Bill Choat in his answer. He's an Answers member and he's great. Here's a link to his website.





http://www.american-bonsai.com





I hope you manage to straighten out this problem with your bonsai.|||Rob is right in saying that you starved the tree of it's dormancy period and now it is stressed.





Because you said it did have a bud, at least you know it's still alive and there is some hope.





Here's what I would do -


Get it back outside into a very protected area. Protect from strong winds, as it will cause rapid drying of the soil. Protect from full sun, because any new "sickly" leaves will burn up. Placing it under a high canopy tree would be good as it would still receive filtered sunlight, but not burn. Apply minimal fertilizer, only enough to ensure proper nutrients but not forcefully encourage new growth. Keep the soil somewhat moist, but not soggy, do not allow to dry completely.





If it is in a bonsai pot with very little soil, I would also consider an "emergency" re-pot either into a growing box (training pot) or even better, into the ground for a year or more to allow it to recover. While repotting is never good for a stressed plant, especially this time of year, I have used this as a last chance effort to save a tree.





Good luck