juniper help

[the fitter]

Hi can anybody advise me on what type of food to use on my juniper and how often to feed it please.

[kdodds]

General rules should work fine, either use a natural bonsai fertilizer like cakes, or conventional fertilizer at half strength about once per week during growing season, not at all during dormancy.

This tree is being kept outside, right?

[luigonz]

Compost!!!!

[tomc]

Compost!!!!

I must humbly disagree. Very small amounts of compost can be used as soil is first mixed. As a top dressing as continuing fertilizer source it makes for too mucky soil.

Fish cakes for the organic hobbyist, soluble fertilisers for everybody else. Pick the flavor you like and use it twice monthly at half reccomended strength.

I continue with a solitary sugar maple, and have had other growers ridicule me for persisting in leaf-cutting and training this tree, even though it makes me happy to have at least one on my bench.

Sugar maple is one tree that likes a bit of compost in its soil (larch and Bald cyrpess are others). But it needs be 'just a little'.

Too much or too often hasn't been good for my trees.

[kdodds]

Definitely have to agree with tomc. For moisture loving tropicals kept indoors, you can go pretty heavy on the compost IN THE INITIAL MIX, up to maybe 50% for trees that REALLY like it wet. But as a continued method of weekly feeding? No, I don't think so, compost would be a VERY poor choice and does not make enough nutrient readily available for the tree to be considered a long term 100% solution when used in a mix. So, even if you've got this tree that likes to sit ankles deep in mud, nutrient availability for the kind of growth you want just won't be there unless you're supplementing with a weekly fertilizer during growing season.