Mike asked, about his maple:

was wondering
if there was any different care than a juniper? Anything different i should
d?

It is really hard to respond to a question like that. It's like asking "Is there a difference between care for huskies and poodles"? Both are dogs, but anyone who's got experience with both would know there's a lot of difference, too.

With junipers, you care about the large branch structure, and you really can't *see* fine branch structure, so you can clip a juniper (like a poodle). Many junipers grow all season long, and need to be tended all season long. They bud back fairly well as
long as there are green needles on the branch, but it's chancier on older wood, so major branch decisions need to be made ahead of time.

Maples need greater attention to fine ramification, and there are really two times a year when they need pruning, and woe to you if you miss those times: after the springtime budbreak when you'll want to cut the tree back to 1-2 pairs of leaves, and then a
month or so later when the buds released from apical dominance emerge. Because maples have opposite branching, a lot of the decision making is fairly automatic, and maples, with minimal prompting, will look pretty nice. I worry more about trunk girth, an
d will pick a branch early on to be a sacrifice branch.

None of this will make sense to you now, but it will after you have kept the trees for a while. It's one reason you might want to keep a tree for a year before doing anything to it: you learn the particular rhythm of the species, and then you are better a
ble to train it.

-Nina

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