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Spider Mites
Hold a piece of white paper under a juniper branch and shake it. Look at any small specks that fall on the paper through a magnifying glass. If you see brown, red, green or yellow eight-legged insects, your juniper has spider mites.
Spray the bottom of the leaves, where spider mites feed, using a water hose with a high-pressure nozzle.
Combine 3 tablespoons of vegetable-oil based soap with 1 gallon of water and add the solution to a spray bottle. Mist the underside of the juniper leaves with the solution. Inspect the leaves after one week and reapply the solution if necessary.
Bagworms
Inspect your juniper branches for elongated off-white or gray bags of caterpillar larvae, indicating that your juniper has a bagworm infestation.
Grasp the bags and pull them from the branches. Destroy the bags by fire to prevent spreading.
Spray the caterpillars that emerged from the sacs with an insecticide containing the active ingredient bacillus thuringiensis. The caterpillars often emerge from the sacs in late spring to summer. Spray the juniper every 10 days until the caterpillars are eradicated.
Juniper Tip Blight
Examine the twigs and branches of the juniper bush in early spring for brown twigs, dead twigs and twigs lying on the ground, signalling juniper tip blight infection.
Wipe the blades of your bypass pruners with 1 part isopropyl alcohol and 3 parts water. Prune back the infected twigs 2 inches into the live wood.
Sterilize the blades in between use and destroy the trimmings.