Brown branch on Juniper

[Richard Tuur]

Another thing, the inside sections, close to the trunk, of some of the smaller branches on my Juniper are brown. I don't recall if that was the way it was when I bought it two weeks ago. Is something going wrong? Is it fading away on me already, or is that normal for a Juniper.

[The Helpful Gardener]

Junipers shade themselves out and pass like that on the inside. Clean that out (I have the tongs specifically for that, but fingertips will work; they are the preferred tool for pinching junipers anyway). Dry spots lioke dead dry foliage are sure fire breeding spots for mites...

My old sensei used to say you should keep a juniper so a bird can fly through it, i.e., good airflow between branches...pinch the needles back to create "clouds"; pads of foliage that will ramify (get twiggier) the more you pinch. Junipers lioke lots of little nips more than big cuts...

HG

[Richard Tuur]

Sorry..I am new to this [waiting for my first club meeting and reading alot..] what exactly to you mean by 'pinching back' the plant to correct the browning

[The Helpful Gardener]

Richard, there's no correcting dead foliage. You will invariably get some die back in shaded parts of the tree. If whole branches go brown, it is likely phomopsis, or juniper twig blight, and you need to remove the branch before it spreads into the trunk. But from what I heard it sounds like the kind of die-back that is inherent in the genus...

Scott