For some trees in their first year in the ground always look bad but comes back looking much better next year (small size trees). Also, planting time does make a huge difference during the first year. Planting in fall/winter will give you much better looking tree compared to spring planting. Sometimes the tap water does funky stuff to the leaves when watered so if you use sprinkler system for the lawn, it's probably why. If you're worried about watering too much, look at the year of 2007 when Texas got a lot of rainfall. That happened to be such awesome year for tree growth. Must be something in the rainwater, eh? As far as getting rid of grass, I use round up to kill them then mulch over dead grass. I occasionally us RU whenever grass pops through the mulch. Annoying but that's Bermuda grass for you. It'd take nuclear weapon to get rid of it entirely. Throw in Montezuma Cypress... Pretty cool tree to have that will turn rustic red in the middle of the winter. Mine grew 4-5 ft in their first year. Shantung Maple 'Skinny Dragon' looks like it grew about 5 ft? Blaine's Dragon about 3-4 ft. Super Dragon got burned off unfortunately. I guess full brunt of afternoon sun was too much for lime green color leaves to handle... Or too much water since all the container trees were around it that needed daily watering in the summer. Who knows?

The Texas Red Oak trees started in small little cups. As they have grown, I have transplanted them to larger pots. They are now in 10-12 gallon pots. A local nursery ended up donating the pots to me and they filled the bed of my truck with an organic (medium) potting mixture. Yesterday, I was in the backyard and noticed that some of the pots were in the hot sun from 12pm to 4pm and those were the trees that were doing the worst. I moved these into another location so they will not get so hot. Hopefully this will help them out. Again, I appreciate all of your time and help. Any additional help and info would be greatly appreciated. Would liquid fertilizer help these grow any faster? Thanks!

There are some native Texas Red Oak growing wild around here. They are usually ready about the time the leaves start turning red which is typically end of October. If no else volunteers, send me an email at end of October with your address and I will see what I can find. I have planted these in pots and gotten germination, but they wouldn't grow more than 3-4". There are some Red Oaks on the Sabinal River west of San Antonio, but I am not sure if they are small Shumard Red Oaks or large Tx. Red Oaks (or possibly hybrid). They are midway in size between the two types and have good color. I have gotten a couple to grow when transplanted. If you would like some of those acorns send me an email soon, as I plan to go there in early October. However note that these trees are from Z8 very near Z9 so may not be a good choice for Z7 Colorado.

Yes, my neighbor has it. They planted a 5g size in spring of 2006 and barely grew since then. Not sure why but it doesn't appear to be fast grower at all compared to other trees. not even close! Live oak is nice. I planted on at the neighborhood park (the very first one there) when I decided I didn't want it in the front yard facing west because I figured I'd need all the sun I can get during the winter after seeing electricity bill in the winter! For the park, I also planted chinkapin (the one with rare red fall color), burr oak, a few montezuma cypress, a few mexican white oak, lacebark elm (fast grower!), a couple of texas white ash and one "shumard" red oak which remains to be seen if it's actually pure shumard or not. Believe it or not, I did all of the work myself. I happened to live across the street from the park and it was sad looking place without trees and it gets freaking hot so I talked to HOA about it and they gave me money for it! Can't wait to see how they turn out in 10 years. At my house, I have some shantung maples, mexican white oak (turning out to be a nice one!), burr oak (leaves are always ugly for some reason; may get rid of it and replace with rare New Mexico Montezuma cypress), big tooth maple (nice red growth!). I just need one more medium sized, a fast growing one right in the front yard that would provide shade rather sooner than later. I didn't want shumard oak because it would get too big and crowd out other trees that I had planted. I figured Texas Red oak would fit the bill but I'm not in a hurry to decide. Still have time till fall for it. Oh, I live on limestone rubbles so they need to be able to tolerate growing in that kind of soil.