Juniperus Chinensis, or Chinese Juniper, is one of the most sought-after species of conifers in landscape design. This shrub is appreciated by gardeners for its decorative qualities, low soil requirements and the possibility of using some varieties in bonsai art.

Botanical Description

Juniper Chinese is a type of evergreen coniferous plants widely distributed in the east of continental Asia. One of the most notable shrub varieties is Blue Alps. In rare cases, the bush can grow up to 4 m in heightforming a wide crown, the diameter of which is up to 2 meters.

When describing the variety, it is important to note the main quality of the Blue Alps. It lies in the attractive appearance of the needles, painted in a silver-blue tone. The lush branches of the shrubs fit snugly together, which, with proper care and cutting, allows the gardener to form high hedges from the plants.

Important! Juniper is bearing fruit. However, they are extremely toxic, and their use is strictly prohibited.

Among other things, the bush has needles whose length does not exceed 1 cm. The needles give off a pleasant smell, which also drives insects away from the plant. It is important to prune the shrub as a sanitization and protect it from a large amount of sunlight - otherwise the crown will turn yellow. Juniper chinensis grows slowly, like other coniferous vegetation. Shrubs can grow up to 2 meters in height only by the age of ten.

Growing regions

This Chinese culture is highly resistant to cold. With not prolonged frosts, when the air temperature drops to -30 ° C, the juniper will not suffer. This allows us not to insulate the bush in the southern latitudes and partially in the temperate climatic zone.

Due to frost resistance and unpretentiousness to the soil, weather conditions of central Russia, the Urals and Siberia, as well as the northern regions of the country are suitable for cultivation. In these areas of the Russian Federation, juniper requires warming for the winter.

Landing

The success of Blue Alps juniper cultivation depends not only on gardener skills.

The main factors include:

• quality of planting material;
• proper selection of a place;
• time of year when landing.

Care is also important after the plant has already been planted. Take into account that the best season of the year for planting Chinese juniper is mid-spring: in late April or early May, the ground is already warmed up enough, which allows the coniferous plant to take root and grow stronger over the summer.

If the shrub will be grown in the southern latitudes, then the beginning of autumn is suitable for planting: in September it is still not cold, and the gardener still has time to prepare young coniferous vegetation for winter.

Video: Juniper planting

Seedling preparation

Before planting, you must purchase planting material. It is better to do this in nurseries: there is a higher chance of getting a strong and healthy seedling whose properties correspond to the Blue Alps variety. For any gardener, the ideal option when the age of the shrub has reached 3 years.

Before buying, pay attention to the quality of the shoots, which should have a flexible structure and light brown color. There should be no mechanical damage or cracks on the branches. The color of the needles should be uniform without spots and splashes. If it is possible to inspect the root system, check for mold and other signs of fungus.

Did you know? Juniper was used as a remedy in the ancient states of Egypt, Greece and Rome.

Often, seedlings are planted in a container with a small amount of soil. Before planting, it is important to carefully remove the planting material from the pot together with the soil, if possible without touching the root system. If the plant is very small, then it is possible to carry it directly in the hands. When the shrub is more mature, you may need to use a wheelbarrow so as not to cause damage to the branches and rhizome.

Site selection and preparation

The choice of the place of planting of Chinese juniper plays a big role in its further development. The plant loves sunlight, but at the same time, with its excess, the needles begin to turn yellow, therefore it is important to choose the place that is illuminated by the sun in the morning and evening, but remains in the shade during lunch hours. For example, you can plant juniper at the fence or near the house. If the shrub will be used in the composition of landscape design, you can choose a location for it near a tall conifer, whose crown will protect a small plant from the sun at a certain time of the day.

Take into account the fact that the juniper Chinese Blue Alps does not like excessive moisture and waterlogging of the soil. If the soil is too moist, the plant will grow poorly, therefore it is important to find a site in the selection of a place in which groundwater lies as deep as possible from the surface. Like all conifers, juniper does not like open spaces with strong winds. Strong gusts of air dehydrate the soil, because of which the juniper rhizome can dry out.

The best soil for this shrub is sandy loam, but loamy is also suitable. The latter requires its enrichment with two buckets of a sand-peat mixture per 1 m². In the sandy loam soil, on the contrary, it is necessary to add a clay mixture in an amount of 20 kg. Before planting, determine the pH of the soil: juniper does not grow in acidic soil. To neutralize the acid, you must add alkali-containing materials such as calcite or chalk.Then it remains only to dig a small hole. The optimal size in diameter is 1.5 m. If more than one plant is planted, then it is necessary to choose a distance between them so that the bushes do not interfere with each other's development. For the Blue Alps variety, the interval between the bushes should be up to 1.5 m. The depth depends solely on the size of the seedling: it is necessary that the plant’s neck is level with the soil. If the earth is not rocky in nature, you will need to erect a drainage layer of broken brick, rubble or expanded clay.

Landing process

Having prepared the place, the gardener can only carry out the planting of juniper.

To do this, follow this algorithm:

1. Prepare the soil according to the paragraph above, fill up the drainage.
2. To ensure better growth of juniper, add a nutrient mixture consisting of 10 kg of peat, 5 kg of sand, 100 g of superphosphate and 80 g of potassium sulfate.
3. Moisten the pit with 10 liters of water.
4. Remove the seedling from the container.
5. Place the planting material in the pit so that the plant’s neck remains on the surface.
6. Fill a thick layer of sawdust or other small material of organic origin.
7. The remaining space is filled with soil.
8. Tamp the soil and irrigate.

To water the planted juniper for the first time, depending on the age and size of the shrub, you will need up to 2 buckets of water.

Juniper Care

Juniper Chinese Blue Alps varieties are not too demanding to care for, but it needs watering, top dressing and loosening. In the northern latitudes, conifers also need warming before the cold season. After planting for the first month, the shade is shaded to prevent yellowing of the needles. To do this, you need to use a structure with an improvised burlap roof for lunch.

Video: how to properly care for juniper

Watering

During the first two months from planting, it is necessary to water the juniper every week with three buckets of water. After being watered less and less, bringing it up to 1 time per calendar month in conditions of summer drought.

Important! If the summer season is too dry, also irrigate when watering. This will refresh the juniper crown and help the bush absorb more moisture.

When a plant develops in one place for more than 3 years, in one season the soil of the plant is moistened no more than 4 times. However, along with this, the required volume of water increases: one shrub requires 5 buckets of liquid.

Top dressing

In the first years after planting, juniper does not require additional feeding. For the 4th year from the moment of planting, fertilizers can already be applied.

This process can be divided into three stages:

• spring;
• summer;
• autumn.

At the end of March, 500 g of urea or the same amount of nitroammophoska is sprinkled with soil around the trunk. By mid-summer, juniper needs to be fed a nutrient mixture containing potassium sulfate and superphosphate. The fertilizing mass should be 700 g per 1 m² with a proportion of 1: 1. A month before the first frosts, add the same nutrient mixture in the same amount as in the summer season.Please note that when applying fertilizers, the plant must be abundantly watered. This will help the juniper get minerals without risking to burn the rhizome. Fertilizing is important primarily for the gardener, because with the help of nutrients, the shrub grows needles much faster, and the root system develops faster, which leads to faster growth in general.

Video: fertilizers for conifers

Loosening and mulching

Given that adult juniper rarely requires watering, after each application of moisture, it is necessary to loosen the soil. This will allow water and minerals to reach the root system faster. Due to the fact that the rhizome lies in the upper soil layer, the soil must be loosened at a shallow depth - up to 5 cm.

After loosening, you can immediately mulch using peat. If the gardener does not have a peat mixture, an ordinary moist soil from the garden will do. Provided that the juniper is regularly mulched after loosening, the overall risk of emergence of weeds is reduced, and the root system becomes protected from drying out.

Pruning

Juniper variety of Chinese Blue Alps does not require compulsory trimming. If the gardener wants to reduce the width of the crown, the branches can be cut, but no more than a quarter of the length. It is impossible to remove large areas of the plant - it can easily die from the resulting stress. By mid-spring, when the soil is already warmed up and cold weather is not expected, it is necessary to prune branches that have been damaged by frost.If areas with ailments or broken shoots are found, they should also be cut. After the pruning process, it is necessary to treat the places of cuts with a solution of water with copper sulfate. To activate the development of juniper after the sanitary removal of parts of the shrub, you can use drugs to stimulate growth, for example, Epin.

Video: juniper pruning

Winter preparations

In the central regions of the country, adult Chinese juniper does not require insulation during cold weather. Late spring, above the root system, add a layer of a mixture of land and peat to the soil. Young plants under the age of 3 years can die in southern winters. To insulate them, it is enough to mulch and cover the crown with spruce.

If there is no possibility to insulate with natural plant material, sacking will do. When the air temperature stabilizes at the beginning of spring, and no frost is expected, then the insulation design is removed. The same procedure is relevant for adult shrubs in northern Russia, so that the gardener is fully confident in the survival of juniper in the winter.

Possible diseases and pests

Although the Blue Alps is highly immune to most diseases, all conifers are susceptible to diseases of fungal origin. First of all, it is rust. It manifests itself in the form of growths with a dirty red color on the needles. This disease leads first to yellowing, and then to the death of the affected areas of juniper. After detection, it is important to immediately treat the plant with fungicides, such as Alpen Agro or Skor. Processing should be carried out, following the instructions on the packaging, twice with an interval of a week.Inexperienced gardeners often can dry out juniper branches. This problem is incurable and often occurs due to incorrect planting of shrubs when they are tightly adjacent to each other and interfere with the development of neighboring plants. If this is not so, then pay attention to the possible presence of weeds that absorb all the nutrients from the soil near the Chinese juniper. As a preventive measure, try to constantly maintain cleanliness on beds with shrubs and carry out sanitary pruning.

Did you know? Juniper, like many other conifers, can survive up to 600 years in the natural environment.

Perhaps the matter is in insects: in March and October, to avoid the appearance of an ailment, treat the plant with any insecticides. Another fungal disease, brown shute, can manifest itself in June. The coniferous cover of the crown begins to fade, and then darkens to a brown hue. In August, black blotches appear throughout the juniper, and the needles crumble. If the gardener did not have time to notice the ailment in time, then the bush must be dug up and burned to avoid infection of other specimens.

With the timely detection of the disease, it is enough to cut off the diseased areas and sprinkle with Bordeaux liquid or a solution of water with copper sulfate. The main pests include sucking insects. Their principle of action is to suck the juices from the needles, which slowly leads to the death of the Chinese juniper. A spider mite is often found as a pest. These insects absorb the juice from the needles of the plant, which leads to its yellowing and death. To exterminate the pest, it is necessary to treat the Blue Alps with such insecticides as Aktara, and twice.The interval between spraying the chemical should not exceed 7 days - otherwise the new generation of spider mites will survive. Often on a juniper you can see aphids. It is also a sucking insect that develops rapidly and feeds on the crown of conifers. To get rid of aphids, it is also necessary to double-treat the plant with the preparation “Karbofos”. You can use home remedies: garlic infusion and ash and soap solution are great.

Breeding methods

The new seedlings of the Chinese juniper Blue Alps receive using cuttings. This process can be carried out during sanitary pruning in the spring. Simply select the strongest branch at the top of the crown and cut it off with a section of stiff bark. The resulting stalk should have a length of up to 20 cm. Next, you need to clean the bottom of the branch from the coniferous cover, and then treat it with a growth stimulator, for example, the Epin preparation.

After the cuttings are planted in a container filled with a mixture of equal proportions of sand and peat, to a depth of 4 cm and with an angle of inclination of 45 °. Do not forget to pour the received seedling with a small amount of water so that it does not stagnate in the pot. After this procedure, you need to cover the container with a film, creating a greenhouse effect, and put it in a room with an air temperature of about + 20 ° С. In the first 3 months, the resulting planting should be irrigated every 3 days with water at room temperature, remove the film for ventilation and monitor the general condition of the seedling.If it starts to turn yellow, then there is no sense in looking after it anymore. With the advent of the kidneys, the film must be completely removed, and the container should be transferred to a place where there is sunlight, and the temperature is on average + 18 ° С. Seedlings are grown indoors for at least 1.5 years. After that, when the young juniper gets stronger, it can be transplanted into the garden, as was done with another shrub.

Use in landscape design

Juniper Blue Alps can become both an additional element of composition in landscape design, and the basis for a thematic Chinese garden. This plant goes well with deciduous trees due to the unusual texture of the needles and the unusual color. Due to slow development and low growth, Chinese juniper can become the basic element in the composition, consisting of a lawn and rocky slopes.

Did you know? Juniper fruits resemble the berries. However, these are just bumps.

In this case, the use of smaller plants common in China, such as the rank, is justified. These flowers of pink shades once again emphasize the non-standard color of the Blue Alps needles, while creating a pleasant color contrast. In addition to Chinese juniper, a nice picture of the garden can be supplemented with scaly. Some varieties of these undersized coniferous shrubs have a blue color, which creates an even greater effect of the play of colors.Blue Alps is perfect for a separate type of Chinese art, bonsai. Thanks to the flexibility of the juniper to shape its appearance, a skilled gardener can create a beautiful hedge growing along the alley in the garden. With proper growth control, gardeners can create a truly unique and unusual composition of juniper with attractive geometry, and the aroma from a coniferous plant will only emphasize the beauty of nature in the garden.

Thus, the Blue Alps variety is undemanding to care, but at the same time it has amazing decorative properties. The unusual color of the needles, a pleasant aroma and easy shaping of the plant will appeal to the most sophisticated gardener. In addition, this coniferous shrub is rarely exposed to diseases and pest attacks, which allows only minimal prevention to maintain the active development of Chinese juniper.