Need help with a Juniperus

[He Who Walks Alone]

I have a MAJOR problem with a Juniperus that was given to me about two years ago. Let me start by giving you some history about this tree. A friend of mine give me the tree as a birthday present, I guess he bought it on one of the most fancy nurseries in Mexico City and of course the tree was beautiful by then and that is where my problems begun.



At the beginning and as I knew very little about bonsais, I placed it on the TV room near to a window. Everything seems to go find with it until last winter, when it starts to loose some green and become to get dry and brown. I used to water it three times a week or a little more often if I assumed it needed more water.



After I realized it was getting dry, I took it to my Bonsai teacher (as you can imagine, I am taking bonsai classes) and he told me that the tree needed new soil, so he change it and do some medium pruning (he took out some minor branches and get rid of all the dead parts), also he rearrange the nebari.



After that, I put the tree back on my TV room as it was before and, in my opinion, the tree starts to recover as new buds were coming out, but just in some branches as the other were still getting dry. So I decided to move it outside with some of my others trees, and I guess that he didn't like it or he got a terrible disease that is killing him.



Right now I still have it outside in a place where it can receive direct sun at midday (from 1:00 to 3:00) and the rest is pretty well illuminated, also, the place has fine ventilation and I water the tree four times a week.



Now it still have some new buds, but very few, as a matter of fact I am pretty sure that the tree will dye soon if I don't do something really fast.



So, I will appreciate any help you can provide me, even more, my tree will be more grateful with you all.



"Saludos" from Mexico City,



P.S. I am including a link to a site where I posted some pictures of the tree http://public.fotki.com/RobertoAD/bonsais-1/junipero/.

[larsdidriksen]

as far as i know the juniperus is a needle tree, and thus it needs wind. It needs to be outside, its really an outdoors bonsai. Since evaporation and water conservation is very different for needle trees, you might not see any change for a long time (a year is not uncommon) if the tree is sick. The juniperus doesn’t mind getting dry either, the juniperus i prone to rootrott. Go look at needle tree habitats. So perhaps you could cut down on watering the tree so much, especially outside. Make sure it gets wind, and not to much midday sun, place it in some light shade, still with amble sun light, but don’t cook it ;-)

That said i dont really know exactly how much water your tree needs, I would like to find out though, so if you figure it out, please let me know. the same with anyone else reading this, just how much water does a juniperus need?<br><br>Post edited by: larsdidriksen, at: 2008/06/06 22:50

[mikey012076]

Here you go all you need to know about junipers...
http://www.knowledgeofbonsai.org/species_specific/junipers.php