I have buried some pots in the ground and there are definitely some pros and cons. First, This is best done with pots that have side holes only. You will know why this is important when you try to pull them out in fall. If there's holes in the bottom, it's hard to reach to the roots to cut them off. I would bury half of the pot, 3 gallon sizes min. In fall when pulling out, cut around the put and it will pull easily. The trees will grow much faster if the roots had penetrated to the soil. Watering needs are much less, fertilize less. Make sure to prune the trees when you prune off the roots to keep the tree in balance. The disadvantages is the Nematodes. If you have RKN problem in your soil, than I wouldn't do that for sure. Bass

Is the soil actually moist when you stick a finger in? Sometimes when potting soil gets dry, it actually repels water due to the high peat content and so water runs down the outside of the rootball instead of soaking in. If this is the case (dry soil) then submerge the whole pot in water until it stops giving off bubbles. Then remove and let drain. How cold did it get last night? Hydrangeas are frost sensitive, so if you are in an area with cold weather, it might have gotten too cold. If that is the case, you will just have to keep the soil slightly moist, bring it in at night and put out where it gets morning sun only, and continue this until after danger of frost has passed. Leaves and flowers will either recover or die, and you can remove anything that dies once it is clear it won't recover. If you put it out in full sun and it was (almost certainly) greenhouse grown, it may have gotten too much sun, too suddenly. These are part shade plants, preferably morning sun and afternoon shade when it's hotter, but all plants need an adjustment period going from indoor or greenhouse conditions to outdoors. Start with bright shade and give it a little more sun each day over the next couple of weeks until it has adjusted. For care if it was sunburned, similarly to frost damage, leaves and flowers will either recover or die (depending on severity of damage), and you can remove anything that dies once it is clear it won't recover. Where are you generally (state and nearest large city)? In my area, this type of hydrangea (bigleaf hydrangea, Hydrangea macrophylla) isn't fully hardy so is best grown in pots and overwintered in a building such as a garage that stays around freezing in winter.

Hello everyone, I wanted to give an update and ask an additional question. The container Eureka (which was in the ground a couple of weeks ago) seems to be doing ok. Before I moved the tree into its container, this tree had ants and aphids, so I think I was able to get rid of them by doing pretty much what everyone was suggesting here. I had a professional treatment in my yard for ants and it looks like, so far, so good with the ants. Haven't seen any in almost a month now. One of the things I was going to keep the ants and aphids away was to shoot the leaves with the spray nozzle so that I would spray off as many pests as I could. Now that the Eureka is in a container, I was kind of expecting some transplant shock (I think I did a pretty good job getting the majority of the rootball out intact). I believe that part of the transplant shock is to lose a few leaves, but because I am continuing to spray the tree leaves with the nozzle, the leaves are now falling every time the hard stream hits them. The tree is not bald by any means, but it has been almost two weeks now since the transplant and the leaves have not stopped falling every time I spray. I think I just need to give it more time to recover. Laura, yes, you explained it correctly as I visualized and understood exactly what you said. I did add more, which makes the tree even taller. Thank you! This container is SO big and the tree is high up in the air now. It was a good sized tree in the ground, but now that it is sitting so high up in the container, I am spraying the nozzle stream way up in the air to reach the entire canopy and I have had to use a ladder when applying neem oil to the leaves. The Meyer lemon is still in its nursery container and I will not put it in the ground until next month. I am going to do an additional Terminix treatment for ants one more time in Sept and then I'll put it in the ground. Here's my question: Can I reuse the 5-1-1 mix that the container Eureka is in for something else IN CASE the tree does not make it? Obviously, this is not my plan- for my tree not to make it- but my neighbor had an interesting question that I would like to learn the answer to. I was complaining to her about how many leaves my container Eureka is losing and that I was certain that the tree would make it, but that I was still nervous about how many leaves it was losing. She asked what I was going to do with the very expensive, ginormous container of 5-1-1 mix if the tree died. Her suggestion was that instead of throwing it away, that I reuse it for other plants as the mix was not necessarily diseased but rather, the tree died because of the transplant so the mix should still be healthy for reuse. I have been talking about up-potting my smallest mango tree (which would go in a container much smaller than this). If I were to be able to reuse some of the mix, I would share some with my neighbor as she has a couple of repots to do as well. Again, I am not already planning the funeral of my beloved Eureka, I am asking because I would like to learn these answers for the sake of gardening knowledge. Any thoughts?

Sam Marie, all the preceding comments are spot on. But don't give up hope! It's stunted, for sure, and will never be what it might have been, but it's not dead. This looks like a variety that was never meant to be grown in a container all season (and there are some varieties that find that acceptable, just look for "patio tomatoes" and the like), but if you can get hold of the biggest pot you can find and still move around - say 10-15 gallons - and transplant your tomato in there (with a little help from a friend, maybe, to stabilize the top growth during the moving process), you may still get some tomatoes off it. Remove the dying foliage. Leaving it on there will only open a pathway for disease, and there are various kinds of blights that start out looking somewhat like what you've got there, and work their way up the plant, gradually killing it off. I'm not saying this is some kind of blight! Just that it's as well to remove anything unhealthy. And if you find you're removing everything on, say, the bottom 8" of plant so that there's nothing but bare stem down there, go ahead and plant it really deep in its new pot. Brand new roots will spread out from the buried parts of the stems (be sure not to bury any leaves), and your plant may be transformed almost miraculously. I've never done anything like this because I've never had to; and real Tomato Experts on this site might tell me I'm all wet. But if you were to give that plant to me and tell me to do my best with it, that'd be my move. And I'd probably get a 2 cu ft bag of Miracle Gro potting mix, to fill the pot, unless you have something else on hand, preferably "soilless" and meant for container growing. (Yes yes, everyone, I know MG is not everyone's cup of tea. But Sam is fairly new at this. It needs to be easy, I think, and that mix has served me relatively well in quite a variety of situations. I amend as necessary.) In my opinion your having kept this thing going and not looking all that bad, all things considered, in what must be a tiny pot, shows true devotion. You have paid careful attention, to get it this far. Good for you! Now for that biggest possible pot ...