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Hello all! I'm relatively new to bonsai, and?I have two juniper bonsai trees that mean a lot to me that might be showing some bad signs...?

I live in Southern California, and it's been hot the last 2 months?(80F-90F).?They have been living outside and?getting full sun 4-7 hours a day for about a year.

I water them often, trying to keep the soil moist, but not wet. I've already looked through a bunch of?online videos/advice, and I feel like I'm doing everything correctly, but they just aren't as vibrantly green as they used to be.?

Is there someone out there that can help analyze the pictures and perhaps give me some advice on how to nurse them back to good health??

Thanks in advance!?

-Danny

You do not mention fertiliser. If you are not adding fertiliser then you need to start. I would go over the plant and remove the dead bits to open the canopy, Junipers also like humidity, when I water they always get water over the foliage as well as the soil. Otherwise they look ok.

Thank you for the reply!?

I actually JUST started putting?fertilizer?(about 30 days before my post)?with a 15-15-15 fertilizer. The trees have only had one "dose" of fertilizer in the last 1.5 years. I'm hoping that will help a little bit.?

Is this a good fertilizer??How often do you fertilize your juniper bonsai's? What fertilizer do you use??

Sorry for all the questions... you're just the only one who replied to me, so I'd love to pick your brain if you're open to it!?

I can take a picture of the fertilizer if that helps!?

Thanks again,?

-Danny?

My Junipers get fertiliser every time I water. They do like a lot. I use Biogold but you can use whatever you have, preferably lower in nitrogen (N) I hate procumbens, the foliage is awful, they don't look too bad, they just need pruning and thinning out so light gets into the inside of the branches that's why there is some dead/dying bits there is not much wrong with the trees. There are several very good courses on here worth getting which will help.

Yea, thinning out procumbens is a very time consuming task. To get it right there are 100s of important decitions to make. For your tree 1000s. My kumono cascading procumbens takes aproximate 3 hours work every spring to thin out. But I just cannot work more than 30-40 minutes before I lose consentration. And I only find time in the weekends. So it is on the working table for 2-5 weeks every year. I just cannot imagine doing it on a tree like that. A skilled and experienced bonsai artist will obviously make it faster, I would suggest finding one to help out.

Tropfrog wrote: Yea, thinning out procumbens is a very time consuming task. To get it right there are 100s of important decitions to make. For your tree 1000s. My kumono cascading procumbens takes aproximate 3 hours work every spring to thin out. But I just cannot work more than 30-40 minutes before I lose consentration. And I only find time in the weekends. So it is on the working table for 2-5 weeks every year. I just cannot imagine doing it on a tree like that. A skilled and experienced bonsai artist will obviously make it faster, I would suggest finding one to help out.

Thank you for your insightful?reply here, Topfrog! This already helps me immensely.

Pardon my ignorance on all of these terms as I'm still learning, but is "procumbens" the type of juniper that I have here? Also, how can you tell? When I look at other junipers they look very much the same as mine.

Also, is it possible to hurt the health of the tree?if I don't think out the foliage correctly? Conversely, is it possible to hurt the health of of the tree if I don't thin out the foliage at all??

Thanks in advance!?

Yes, procumbens is the type and it is very different from most other types and very easy to identify.

It is possible to hurt the tree if thinned out too hard, but you have to go very hard on a healthy tree. You do not hurt the tree by doing nothing. Thinning out is done to maintain growth. It is a method to design and maintain the design. If you want to let it grow wild, but in the long run it will just cease to be the tree you loved in the first place. If you wanted a wild growing tree in the first place, there were no reason to buy a trained one.

Hmm....My bad.

The procumbens identification was not done by me. I do not think it is a procumbens.?

Your tree is not a needle type juniper, but a scale type. The scales looks pretty much like needles, but is not. It can be seen in a few pictures where it has been wrongly pruned and has reverted back to needles. Something scale type junipers do when stressed.

But since It has very small scales the situation is the same, very time consuming to thin out, with the additional challenge that it reverts to needle foliage if done wrong.