Hi Jon, Last July when I transplanted my Meyer (into the 5.1.1. mix, so slightly different, but similar enough, to your gritty) I experienced leaf drop very quickly thereafter, but within a couple or so months of using FP (irrigating every few days to a week) and the dowel method (like you), new leaves started to appear. What I did do that you didn't mention, is that I withheld fertilizing and placed the tree in slightly shaded environs, and I only started feeding again when new growth appeared. Did you happen to do this? It could just be that since you did the transplanting during the dormant season, your Meyer is just taking a little bit longer to show leaves - 3 months is a very short time in the lifespan of a Meyer. :-) Lastly, I was wondering why you've kept your Meyer indoors at all given your zone? My microclimate in SF places me in zone 8B/Sunset 17, and I'm able to grow the Meyers outdoor year-round for example, and I would think you could do likewise. Tim

Just wanted to post a followup on this for anyone who may come across this thread in the future. I always hate finding a thread full of good information, but then not knowing if it actually worked or not. I replaced the trees that died, and the new ones are doing great. Here's what I did differently. (I know that for some of you, these may be the most obvious things in the world, but some of us are still learning, even from our really stupid, obvious mistakes). - I waited til it cooled down. It got cooler earlier than I expected, so I was able to do the transplants a couple weeks ago. - Smaller trees. I did still really need the height, so I went with 6-8' tall trees (some are about 9', actually), but I got much smaller caliper (trunk diameter) trees. I tried for no more than about 1.5" caliper, measured 6 inches above the root flare (some are a little closer to 1.75"). They're definitely much less full, but they'll get the job done until they fill in and grow up a little. It helps a lot that I found out that for screening purposes, eastern red cedars can be planted as close as 4' apart. Bigger, fuller trees really aren't needed at that spacing. - No starter fertilizer. These are trees, not grass. I used some Fertilome Root Stimulator & Starter solution (per the manufacturer's instructions) when I planted, and may add some Superthrive in a couple weeks, just to get the roots really going before winter kicks in. - Much better care of the root balls. I didn't make perfect root balls, as such - after reading a whole lot of back and forth between scientists on the benefits of good root balls vs taking as much root as possible, even if they're outside of the dirt, I kind of went with a hybrid approach. I got as much root as I could, and kept as much dirt on them as possible. I kept all of them covered with dirt of some type for as much time as possible, and ensured that they never actually got dry. Total time from digging to planting was less than 4 hours, and most of that time, they were in some kind of dirt. - I watered with a sprinkler for a few days, to let moisture come in through both the roots & leaves, in case the roots were having difficulty of some kind. Then I found out about Wilt-Pruf (prevents moisture from escaping through the leaves, which causes a lot of transplant shock). I applied it per the manufacturer's instructions, and am now watering with a soaker hose, as Wilt-Pruf should also prevent absorption of water through the leaves. - I haven't mulched yet (life got in the way unexpectedly), but I will be soon. Something else I came across in my reading - mulch isn't required, but most bushes or trees that are mulched in their first year or two after transplant show 20%+ more growth than those that aren't. Since growth & size are my primary goals here, it's worth having that junk in my yard for a year or two. We'll see what, if anything, will grow under these trees once they're established, but for now, it's gonna be mulch. Thanks, everybody, for all the insights provided. Hopefully these results, and what I did to get them, will be useful to someone else in the future, too.

Ezzirah, I often recommend the jar soil test to new gardeners, using an article from Fine Gardening magazine that described it and soil improvement really well. We have highly variable soil here, so I did a jar soil test about every 20 yards to figure out what sort of soil we had in each location before I began doing soil improvement and planting. Then I tried to amend the individual areas based on what I learned from the jar soil test. You can have really hard compacted sand and if it is dry, it will seem like it is clay until you get it wet and break it up. As long as it remains compacted, water will roll right across the surface of it or will bead up on it like water beads on a tabletop. We have one big pocket of sandy-silty soil that cuts across the property from south to north. Well, it isn't that big compared to the size of the property. At its widest point it might be 40 feet wide, and it runs about 130' long, but the part of it that runs inside the west garden fence is only about 8' wide. Everything I planted in the sandy area struggled in the summer until I'd been amending it for 6 or 8 years. I just couldn't put in more organic matter than the heat could decompose in a year. It still is not as good as the well-amended clay because it still drains too quickly, but it is a lot better than it used to be. Four o'clocks grow in the improved sand like mad so I've let them spread and naturalize themselves all around that sandy area outside the garden fence. Inside the garden fence I grow rhubarb, herbs, some flowers, beans and early tomatoes in various parts of the sandy western edge of the fenced veggie garden. I used to grow great sweet potatoes there, but the area has become too shady from the nearby pecan tree for them to grow there any longer. The rest of our sandy-silty soil is mostly in the woods and the creek bed, so I mostly garden in clay. As much as I dislike clay, it is very rich and fertile. All you have to do is add organic matter to improve both its ability to drain and also to hold moisture properly, and it is great soil. With sandy soil, it is lower in fertility so you're not only having to add organic matter to help it hold water but you also have to fix its fertility issues. My friends here who garden in sandy soil have a lot of trouble with watering in summer because the water just runs down through the sand. Some of them also have root knot nematode issues in their sand. I've never had RKNs here, although of course they could pop up in the sandy area at any time. I'm just lucky that they haven't. In a good year when the grass is growing, we mow once or twice a week, catch all the grass clippings in the mower's grasscatcher and add grass clippings, as mulch, to the garden beds every week all spring, summer and fall. Every bed won't get clippings every week because there's not enough grass clippings to cover the entire garden every week. We often overseed the lawn grass with winter rye grass and that enables me to mow in the winter and add more grass clippings on top of the beds all winter long. It doesn't matter how much I add---the soil always needs more, more, more. Larry, Silt has been the hardest thing for me to learn to recognize. Our really silty area sits at the downhill side of my garden and prickly pear cactus love growing in it, but that makes some sense because the garden slopes and the silt is at the bottom of the slope. I've long wondered if the area where I garden now and the area where the sandy-silty soils are found on our property used to be a slough or creek bed that filled in because that's what it looks like--a sandy, silty river bed that cuts through otherwise impossible red clay. All the trees that existed on the upland part of our property when we bought it were found in 1 location----in that sandy-silty river of soil. Elsewhere in the upland clay we just had mixed prairie grasses and wildflowers. In the lowlying areas we have the thick woodland and what used to be a spring-fed swamp. The spring quit running during a previous drought year and I still call it the swamp, but it only is swampy after heavy rainfall. The best solution when you cannot find organic matter to bring in is to use cover cropping to grow your own organic matter. I've been working with winter rye, spring clover and summer buckwheat to try to improve the area behind the barn where I'd love to put in a fenced area for more veggies or fruits. It is slow going, though. The clay there is just really, really dense and while the cover crops are improving it, it is a slower process than I thought it would be. It is harder and harder to find organic matter here too. We are lucky to have friends who give us their old spoiled hay, but I doubt they'll have any for next year because I think they'll feed it all to their cattle this winter. I'm going to have to be really diligent about gathering autumn leaves this year. My compost pile currently is about 30' long, 6-8' wide and 4' tall, but by the time all that stuff breaks down into usable compost, it won't cover 10% of my garden's raised beds. By the time it decomposes, the volume of it is reduced to about 1-3% of what I started with. That sort of drives me crazy. Building good soil takes a really long time. We've been here 14 years and I'm just beginning to feel like the soil in some places is getting to be "good enough". In other places, it is nowhere near good enough and I don't know if it ever will be, but I keep plugging away. Dawn

Hi rouge21_gw, others in this thread were right that what I did was a bad idea. It was mostly bad timing, as it was better done before the maple leafed out. My maple survived the surgery, lost a lot of leaves but died after the winter. My other JM’s that originally came in containers survived the winter just fine. If you are about to repeat what I did, you will want to plant your JM somewhere in the ground and wait until the next spring. I got my mini nuggets from Sheridan Nurseries. They are indeed hard to find, as Home Depot, Lowe’s, etc. carry only the bigger, non-mini version. I believe there are also specialized mulch suppliers who sell by yards that may have something similar. While what I did in this post was not recommended, I did have a lot of success using mixes containing pine bark, both for indoor and outdoor plants.