Bananas is right about keeping the soil strata as it is. If you don't have a terrible drainage problem your trees will be fine. I've seen commercial apple orchards in clay soil where in early spring the water just sits on the surface, but by the time trees begin leafing out they find enough oxygen for very vigorous growth. I used such an orchard as a nursery site to grow bearing age trees after making a deal with the grower. The trees grew great. If other species of trees (not willows!) are growing well in this soil, I'm sure you're fine, if not, run with berns made from existing soil. Testing the drainage as mentioned is also a great guide line, but I wonder how the soil in the orchard-nursery I mentioned would have tested out.

Looking on Texas A&M, it says it is "Physiological Leaf Roll", caused by drought or other environmental stress. I will have to really watch my watering practices and calculate how much water I am really giving them. Maybe I thought I was doing a good job and really wasn't. -the seedlings were at about 65ish degrees. -I forgot to mention the small fan that was blowing on them... -the peat pots were small, 2-3 inches. The roots were not coming out of the bottoms. They were so tiny! I will not use these again. They dry out to quickly. I had to water them a lot to keep them evenly watered. I will use clean plastic pots next time. -I just realized I did a silly thing. I thought I had bought a bag of Fox Farm's soil less mix, but I just looked at the bag, and it is their Ocean Forest POTTING soil. It has sphagnum moss, perlite/vermiculite (there's a difference?), humus, and a little sand, plus the ridiculous proprietary things (guano, earthworm castings, blurb-blurb-blurb) that I paid too much for. pH of 6.5. -the planter boxes are massive. Made of 4x4s four high, rebar pinning them to the earth, lined with food safe plastic, weed mat underneath (which was stupid in hindsight, what weed in their right mind is getting through 2 1/2 feet of soil?) They are 4ft by 6 ft, and one is 4 ft by 12 ft. They are probably going to be there until I'm 86 years old. My husband does things very thoroughly. :) Our yard's soil is mostly rock and granite. I'm fairly certain there is a concrete and landscape rock cemetery back there; I'm constantly hitting something. -The Pioneer mix was delivered in a big truck. It grows grass wonderfully. - The seeds I got from Jung sprouted, but never really took off. They lost their first set of leaves, got 4-5 branches with nice leaves, but they were just not as robust as I've seen them. I was afraid to set them out too early, so I think I remember setting them out the 2nd week of May sometime to harden. I let them harden till the last week of May, letting them stay out for a few hours and then setting them inside at night. I was getting married the first week in June, so they had to be out one way or another by then. The store bought plants I planted when we got back, around the 3rd week in June. Too late? - The rooting hormone I used was a liquid mix that you dilute. Now that I think about it, I don't think it was a hormone per say, "Root Stimulator" was what it was called. I used it on my transplanted annual beds, just a quick water, or with my new dormant strawberry plants, soaked in a mixture and planted. I think it was just a 4-10-3 fertilizer to give a little boost. Does it work? I honestly couldn't say yay or nay. Maybe I was so stressed out with the upcoming wedding and planning that I didn't pay enough attention to the little things. I never saw any wilting, but that doesn't mean that the seedlings weren't stressed at some point and I didn't notice. This year I will be like a mama hawk! (I feel like I'm in a Sherlock Holmes chapter with all these questions! This is awesome!)

Angela, as long as the CENTER is left intact they should keep growing. If you left 2-3 inches, I wouldn't think you'd have stopped the growth. Maybe a better way for you would be to hand pick the outer leaves. That's actually what I do with my lettuce, it was the mesclun bed that I was cutting. I hand pick leaves from my spinach and my lettuce, only taking leaves that are large enough to use. I notice they aren't growing much right now, and the variety of lettuce I planted, Red Sails, never did get to a decent size...next year I'm going back to my old standby, Prizehead. I ran out and took a photo of my mesclun bed, you should be able to see how closely I cut it and how tall the previous cutting has grown. BTW, I did provide filtered shade for this bed when it was hot...I placed a sheet of white plastic lattice over it, which let it sun, shade and water through. It looks pretty rough, because I just cut last night and then I dug a bunch of it up and put it in containers to hopefully transport to AZ! We are expecting temps back up in the low 70s with lows in the 40s again, so I've moved the seedlings outside. The red lettuce plants I'd put inside under the light turned green! No red in them at all. Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Kitchen Garden

Hi, I've never had any Echeverias, but those roots just don't look healthy to me. I would say your plant was drowning in a mix that is too water retentive. Going forward, I would get rid of all that dressing you had on top of the soil. It traps water inside the soil, prevents evaporation, and keeps oxygen out. Truthfully, I would chuck it and start all over again. But, it seems that you are embracing the challenge of saving this one plant (I love doing that sometimes). If I were you and really wanted to save it, I would get a small bag of perlite, and plant that rooted stem in a small container with 100% perlite. Yes, perlite floats, and it's not perfect, but it will let oxygen get to the roots, and will give it a chance too come back to life. This would only be a temporary thing, until the roots have had a chance to bounce back to life. I have saved a couple of hopeless cases by doing that