Can anyone tell me why the ends of some branches are drying up and turning red on this Thuja? I live near Tucson, Az. zone 9a, and the temperature is between 95 and 105F in the afternoons, but I water it using a soaker hose for 2 hours every second or third night when my finger, moisture meter and wooden dowel agree it's almost dry. It hasn't rained here since I planted the tree on May 8 at 3' tall. I really don't want to lose this tree, it was shipped from Oklahoma. It has never been fertilized. Could it be too much/little water or too intense sun for 10 hours a day? The red tips make me wonder about too much sun. (I planted a 38" Saguaro cactus in March and had to put a net over it because it was getting black bloches from sunburn.) The branch on the left has red tips and came from halfway up the tree. The branch on the right was completely dried out near the bottom of the tree. There is mulch around the tree if the prairie dogs don't dig it up to keep cool after watering! Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

There are a number of rose shrubs that take a couple years to really settle in and start "normal" blooming cycles. It would probably help to get it planted in the ground, however. This time next year, I bed they will all be blooming with abandon. Kate

I'm currently deeply watering tomato plants in my raised beds once every 3-4 days or so with soaker hoses, and that seems to be sufficient. I mulch very thickly, and also train then to be tough and drive their roots deep early on by being very sparing with the water. This helps a lot. Container plants get watered once a day, even the large ones.

Well, if nibbles tells the owner that this arrangement is killing the plants and the owner says to leave it as it is, he can't exactly make the change, can he? He's being responsible about it; some "friends" would let all of them die and just shrug their shoulders when the owner came back, rather than spending time posting pictures and asking questions on a gardening forum. Nibbles, when did you start to give it more water? It's hard to tell because one picture's at the top of the post and the other is at the bottom, but I think at least one of the leaves furthest from the camera is a little less curled in the latest picture than in the first. You might want to check to see if other leaves have improved at all. If they have, the poor thing might even have a chance. Others should correct me if I'm wrong, though, because my experience with succulents mostly consists of admiring other people's plants.