Details
Position: Place the tree outside, year-round, on a bright spot with lots of sunlight. The Juniper cannot live indoors. Some species change their foliage color during frosty periods to a purplish brown which is connected with their frost protection mechanism. In spring they will turn green again.
Watering: Be careful not to water too much, as the juniper roots don't like soil wetness. Before you water, the soil should dry well. Misting the tree can be done regularly, especially after the tree has been repotted because it benefits from air humidity. Continue reading about watering Bonsai trees.
Feeding: Use normal organic fertilizer pellets or balls every month during the growth season or a liquid fertilizer each week. If strong growth is desired some higher nitrogen levels can be applied in spring.
Pruning: To develop the foliage pads, long shoots which stick out of the silhouette can be pinched or cut at the base with sharp scissors throughout the growth season. Do not trim the juniper like a hedge because the removal of all growing tips will weaken the tree and the cut will turn the needles brown. When the foliage pads become too dense they must be thinned out with sharp scissors at the base. The Juniper Bonsai is generally a strong tree that also withstands aggressive pruning quite well. But it cannot bud again from bare tree parts, so take care that there is some foliage left on every branch you want to keep alive.
Wiring: Junipers which are produced for Bonsai purposes are already wired quite heavily in most cases when they are still very young. Dramatically twisted shapes are very popular and correspond with the natural shapes that used to grow in the Japanese mountains in former times. Junipers can be strongly bent, if necessary wrapped with raffia or tape as a protection, but you must be careful with parts which possess deadwood. Those parts break easily. If they are large and old, you can split the deadwood off in order to bend the more flexible living parts. The foliage pads should be wired and fanned out after thinning when necessary, to let light and air get in. Otherwise the inner parts of the foliage pads will die. In addition to this, the danger of pest infestation is increased if the pads are too dense. From the aesthetic point of view we also want to achieve unobstructed structures and want to prevent the juniper from looking like broccoli.
Repotting: Once every two years, very old trees at longer intervals, using a basic (or somewhat more draining) soil mixture. Don't prune the roots too aggressively.
