Great question but no worries. Your potted pine will be perfectly happy with the Osmocote plant food so go ahead and apply the product to the top of the soil and work it into the top one inch of topsoil. I do recommend you wait until spring to fertilize however. When you bring a plant indoors it wakes it up from winter dormancy and then feeding the plant will encourage new growth. This is not good if you then want to move the pine outdoors with cold nights. Better to keep the tree as cool and dormant as possible so it stays in the regular growth cycle set by nature unless it will always be an indoor plant. Pines and other evergreens are not heavy feeders so it will do best with one feeding a year in the spring. A slow release plant food like Osmocote is always better for trees, shrubs and perennials than a liquid plant food that could burn the tips of the leaves by releasing too much nitrogen too fast. Just use one tablespoon of product in each container garden, indoors or outdoors for an average size pot that is 12 to 18 inches wide. Keep Growing, Marianne Binetti