You say it is newly planted so I am assuming it is in the ground. I hope you dug a large hole and filled it in with a very gritty soil mix. The saying is you dig a fifty dollar hole for a five dollar tree. Anyhow watering every day is too much. I would run water slowly for an hour or two once every week or two. Don't fertilize until you see some sign of new growth. Then you could give it almost any balanced fertilizer, say a 10-10-10 with some trace minerals just to make sure it is getting everything it needs. Good luck, Jack

Thanks I definitely used a lot of soil adamant. But, only once a week to start off? I have had plants die because I did not water them everyday for the first week. These were smaller things like bushes.

Soil amendments...Oh Boy...the down fall of many newbies.

Did you do a soil test just to see what your dealing with.

Do not amend with anything...mulch about 2" deep and water when soil is dry 3-4 inches down. Insert finger to test for moisture.

What kind of plants died because you didn't water them everyday? Conifers don't require that much moisture.

Dave

Soil amendments do improve the soil long term. I am not a newbie garden, I just never planted a pine tree before. I am talking about bushes like roses or other small bushes. I read a horror story about a pine tree dying right after planting here in this forum.

Check out the soil forum. Better soil means the nutrients go into the plant. I have sand soil and it will become hard packed which makes a barrier in which water will soak. When this happens and the soil has not been amended, and then you use a mulch program on the top layer which then travels to the lower layers. You may think mulch (by which I mean compost) does not help, but it works it way down to lower levels over time. When your soil has been improved you will see earth worms. The earth worms help to turn your soil. If the soil is dead and devoid of micro organisms and worms your plants will not do as well, unless you are gardening in all desert conditions and planting cactus. I don't actually know about that, but I think an Arizona garden would not benefit from soil amending, but I could be wrong. Also Arizona has a lot of rain to support those big cacti.

Other woody mulches like bark don't really help the soil but they keep some of the weeds away keep soil from washing away. In nature things like fallen leaves help to improve the soil. While eventually the soil will revert back to native type this is why you keep adding compost. You can get free coffee grounds from Starbucks and create your own compost. It does not have to be expensive. The peelings from your own fruits and vegetables can also be used. If you have a branch sheared you can grind up woody materials and make mulch which you can add to coffee grounds. Also if you want smaller decorative plants growing around the trees you want to improve the soil. Weeds are much easier to remove when the soil has amended.

I can see what you saying about a big tree has to live in the native soil eventually and you can not baby them along, but I did look up this type of tree and it said it was tolerant of sandy soils.

I only wish I had amended before I planted the big rhododendron. I planted it before I got into composting, and I always have problems with the soil under that plant. The soil under the Rhododendron is very hard packed and now it's too late to dig it up as the plant is now huge. But with my ginkgo I did amend the soil and the soil under there is much more workable and the weeds come out without so much digging. If the weeds just pop out without digging it is less disturbing to the roots of the tree.

The roots only stay in the amended area, hole you dug, less then a year then they are free range in the native soil on your property. Then all your amending means nothing.

Dave

Thunderhead's are easy to grow and hard to kill. You got an easy one to start out with. They can tolerate a dry root zone better than many other shrubs. Keep them moist now, but since they are dormant, they will not need water now like they will when the buds break in the spring. I would not fertilize them at all unless they seem to have obvious health issues.

You know your soil better than us and have the experience to make the call in how to plant. Normally drainage can be a problem in some areas with conifers in flat areas and clay soils where water stands after rains. If you have a good grade to shed water and a naturally sandy soil, it is likely drainage will not be your problem. Judging how quickly soils dry out during different times of the year will take time for everybody to learn. If your soils dry quickly, I think your amendments will be helpful to retain moisture. Thunderheads are pretty tolerant of mistakes (to a point).

The problem with amending the planting hole heavily with pines is you will get a strong burst of growth, and in the case of a thunderhead, it can be significant. You probably will not see that until spring 2011, if you really amended the soil heavily. Many Thunderheads are sheared by the wholesale nurserys, to artificially keep them dense and compact. If that is the look you where wanting, there are likely many other pines that would maintain that shape naturally. If you do not mind a little candle pruning and occasional removal of strong growth, you should be able to create a good looking compact shape long term.

you water.. when your plants NEED WATER ...

insert finger to second knuckle ... and water when the soil is drying or hot [not all that likely in winter] ...

IMHO.. more plants fail from improper watering than anything else ... and too much water i usually worse than too little ... you can rot all the roots right off the plant ....

watering is an art.. not a science.. meaning it is NOT something you do by a calender ....

be the plant.. water it when it needs water.. ooohhhmmmmm

good luck

ken

PS: and i will add.. MOST pines are very tolerant of very dry soil once established ... they do not need all that much water .... once they get over transplant shock ... so lets hope you can get it past, without killing it

I think it is looking good today. I don't think they made it a funny shape by pruning it, because it looks unpruned and Regan's is a reputable nursery as far as the reviews on yelp go. Although some people did get mad and post some flaming reviews of Regan, but only because they felt like the staff ignored them. You have to go hunt them down to get your tree purchased. The staff does not go around asking you if you need help. I am glad I picked an easy tree. I could not find that much from googling it after I got home.

Here is a link that might be useful: Photo of the dwarf black pine

If you are going to amend the soil - and often soils do benefit from amending - you need to amend a large planting area, NEVER just the planting hole. For a tree with a potentially large root spread, the ideal method is to improve the soil as far as the mature roots might extend. In many cases that may mean the entire yard!

'Proper' or improved soil conditions are one thing - correct planting methods are something else entirely and many gardeners tend to confuse them. The recommendation is that what is dug out of the planting hole goes back in unamended in the way of backfill. If you haven't been able to amend your soil over a wide enough area, then any amendments you may feel you need are far better applied as a mulch or topdressing.

FWIW, I would expect very little possibility of transplant shock planting a conifer even in zone 10 at this time of year. Water only when the soil becomes dry to a depth of 6-8 inches (or the depth of the root ball) as others have mentioned, not according to any predetermined schedule.

Fertilizing may not be necessary at all - most trees and shrubs once established require minimal fertilization. If the tree maintains a deep green color and develops new growth as it should, I'd avoid any additional fertilization.

I've attached a link to a very good current thread on Trees Forum that discusses amending soils. Pay close attention to the comments made by Scott (sbeuerlein) - they are particularly on point.

Here is a link that might be useful: Why not amend soil?

I still believe there is a benefit to amending the soil near the root zone. Some people don't want to bother, so everyone has their own style of gardening.. If I was living in the Midwest, I might not be into it, but I am living on what was sand dunes so I have completely sandy soil. It's not actually soil, it's just sand, and it's really hard to get any success without amending. I save the extra soil to fill in low spots which sometimes occur.

here are two pix of my native yellow sand .. mineral sand ... minimum 20 feet deep ...

I DO NOT AMEND ... nor fertilize ... third pic is a portion of the result ... which was horse pasture 10 years ago ... except for the large hardwoods ...

you have my permission to do whatever you want in your garden ... but please dont make presumptions about what is NECESSARY ... because of sand ... [now if you are really z10 ... and this sand is somehow related to the sea ... and somehow deals with salt issues.. i have NO opinion ...]

drainage is imperative with conifers ... and sand is king ....

are you really z10 .... and can thuns really live there???

good luck

ken
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Nice photos Ken. I love the little blue tree. I am in zone 10 which is due to the winter not getting cold enough, but it's not hot in the summer. In San Francisco the summer is a cold season having about 65 degrees as the high temperature on average. Pines do very well here. But, we don't see things like Willows. My real zone is Sunset 17, but in case people don't use the Sunset Zones, the rest of the bay area is zone 9, but San Francisco is zone 10.

We have a lot Monterrey Pines that were planted by the city to make a fast tree culture that create sidewalk and street cracking problems. The branches are always breaking off and doing damage. Now they never plant new ones, but there are so many of the big old ones left. Now San Francisco mainly plants Palm trees.

I still believe there is a benefit to amending the soil near the root zone. Some people don't want to bother, so everyone has their own style of gardening.

It is not a case of 'not wanting to bother' but rather what has been documented as being best for the establishment of the plant. There is a great deal of scientific research to support not amending individual planting holes regardless of soil type. This is even more appropriate for long-lived, large root system plants like trees than it is for smaller shrubs and perennials. If you haven't reveiwed that thread I attached, I'd suggest you do so - there's a lot of very valuable information contained in it.

btw, coastal California has a number of native species of willows that are quite common and no doubt present throughout the Bay area.

I love these debates about soil amendments.However, much as I respect scientific research and their findings, I'm also a strong believer in personal experience. Many gardeners have compost heaps and return to the land what the plants and/or the animals got out of it. It's part of the satisfaction of gardening.Not everyone owns a well drained piece of land wich was grazing pasture for horses some years ago.When I started planting this plot of land ten years ago I was bending the prongs on my garden fork, wrestling with rocks and hard,bone dry clay. I'd call my wife when I came across a worm, just so she could see for herself. I wasn't going to wait until I had dug over and composted the whole site, so I started planting some shrubs and some fruit trees plus also conifers in the last four years or so;some bare root, some B&B and many container-grown plants.I have always made large & deeply-dug planting holes, to wich are added a barrowload of compost, a handful of superphosphate and some Magnesium sulphate.
Now we have lots of earthworms.I call them the Labour Party.They tunnel their way through the garden and, if I were a tree root, I would follow them, through these thousands of galleries in wich they leave their worm-casts, for my root-hairs to feed upon and send back the minerals to the mother-plant.
Slowly, the planting holes are becoming one as the garden gets fuller.I do not regret putting life back in the soil.
Also, on one or two occasions I was too hasty and planted in smaller holes, with the soil 'as is'. These mostly turned out to be the losers - but not always. T.

PS. I'm eagerly awaiting better weather conditions as I too have a small 'Thunderhead' still to plant.

Composting is a process. You will not see an improvement over night, but if you add some each time you plant a new plant over time you will see an over all improvement in the soil. Even after 15 years I am still not satisfied with the soil quality, and it's a huge amount of work but can be fun and rewarding in the same way as planting. I would never do it on a rental property or on one I was planning to move away from. But, there is more benefit to doing it with small things like primroses, vs big things like trees because small things are more shallow rooted, but I still believe there is some benefit to trees especially a smaller or dwarf tree. But, I just found out the shredded redwood I buy from Osh has been discounted. I add that to my starbucks coffee grounds, and it's going be hard to find a replace. Mushroom compost is mostly sawdust, and that is what they suggested I use to replace it. The whole thing with composting my own food won't work without the Starbucks coffee, and I must have a browns. I am considering stopping composting now. It's so much work, and my soil is in pretty good shape. It can be discouragingly difficult to improve one's soil. But, that great you are at in the south of France.