Help me save my juniper!

[goodie]

I have a juniper tree in my front yard. Its planted in a flower bed with black dirt and clay/rock mixture as a base. I live in Grande prairie, ab canada where the winters are cold. I wrapped the tree this past winter and now this spring it looked healthy but sooner then I knew it the tips were turning brown and it looks like the bark is peeling away. Now the top 6 inches is all brown. I have been watering it everyday and sometime twice. Is there a kind of fertilizer I can give it? what can I do?

[MagnoliaMan]

Regardless of the winter and what the juniper looked like this spring, it sounds to me like you are overwatering it. Here in dry southcentral KS, USA, an established juniper only needs one good, deep soaking a week in the middle of an extended drought to survive. Every day, or twice a day watering will kill off roots by filling the air spaces between soil particles (especially in clay) with water, preventing oxygen from entering the soil. Roots use oxygen and if they can't get it they die. The tops of plants produce oxygen by photosynthesis because they receive sunlight, but roots don't. Back off of the watering. If you have lost some foliage on top it may worsen if you have killed the roots as the plant tries to rebalance roots and topgrowth, but get the plant back to a normal regime that it can handle. Just my guess...
MagnoliaMan