If you're trapped indoors with temps in the teens and 18" of snow on the ground, or you're bored, please join me in imagining you have 2 Dixie cups full of water. Put one in a foam cooler to insulate it against cold. Then put the unprotected cup and the cup-in-a-cooler in a freezer set at 0* F/ -18 C. Does the cooler protect the cup from freezing? No. If you were to actually complete the exercise I described, when you wake the next morning, both cups of water will be frozen solid. So, insulating a large planter as shown above does not prevent soil temperatures reaching killing lows if the ambient temperature reaches killing lows. All it can do is slow the rate at which the temperature drops to killing lows. For the unprotected cup, it will likely occur within an hour; whereas the cup-in-a-cooler might take 12-24 hours. The point is, eventually both cups of water will reach an equilibrium with ambient temp within the freezer, 0/ 18*. The only situation where insulation can be relied upon to be helpful is when there is an extraneous source of heat that can be captured within the pot/soil mass. 2 examples: A) You live in a high rise, have a balcony, and need to protect a plant's from freezing low temps. In this case, you would insulate the pot bottom, 3 sides, and have maybe some ground Styrofoam you can pour over the top of the soil and cover so it won't blow away. So you have a pot insulated top, bottom, 3 sides. Situate the uninsulated side of the pot against the outside wall of the building so heat can conduct from the wall into the pot where it can be "trapped" by insulation. If you insulate entirely, you prevent extraneous heat from entering the pot and end up with another version of cup-in-a-cooler. B) You have a plant hardy only to a zone higher than yours and you want to protect it by keeping it in an attached garage over winter. In this situation, you can do either of 2 things. 1) You could cut the top off of a cardboard box, turn it upside down, and cover the plant. The box will trap geothermal heat rising through the garage floor and keep the plant as much as 20* warmer than temperature outside the box on the coldest of days/nights. 2) you could wrap all for sides of the pot with insulation (but not the bottom). Then, set the pot on the garage floor and cover the top of the soil with cardboard or newspaper relieved around the trunk stem of the plant. This also traps an extraneous heat source - the geothermal heat rising through the floor - in the soil mass. If you insulate the bottom of the pot in case B, you shoot yourself in the foot. BTW - eastern white and western red "cedar" are not really cedars. Thuja is among the 7 or 8 genera with trees referenced as "cedars". Thuja plicata and Thuja occidentalis are arborvitae trees. Al

Did any of your cedars die? We have recently planted seven cedars (three Emerald and 4 Degroot Spires) even though it is not recommended that we plant them in summer months due to high die rate but we are going to baby them and make sure that they get enough moisture and sun. We are concerned that when we planted the Emeralds our grading did not support enough pooling of water at the root circumference and they were looking a bit "weepy". We are also going to ramp up the watering to ensure they get a good soak twice a week. Hoping to see them rebound. No brown or yellow just kind of droopy. The Degroots just went in and we are really babying those as well. They are very beautiful and sculptural. I would love to get more of those.

Hi everyone, sorry for the slow reply, I assumed I'd get email notifications of new posts on this thread, so I was surprised when I logged back in to give an update and found these. It's nice to know (sam_md) how little these plants need in terms of planting etc to thrive... but at the same time mine are definitely getting worse by the week. But one posted here said it was probably handling since it's restricted to some of the branches near the bottom versus an overall browning. There are some branches that are completely brown now. I checked the moisture both with a finger and a moisture meter. The moisture meter the first time I checked after the original replies last week, it was sort of in the middle near the dryish side. Now the moisture is off the charts since its been raining... It just jumps over to 'wet' on the tester and the needle looks like it'd spin right around if it could. So I guess my only question at this point is, should I cut off the dead branches? And should I wrap these up before it starts snowing? It's pretty cold here already. PS: i'm in Southwestern Ontario (Hamilton area), and the tag on the shrubs say Emerald Green Cedar, Thuja Occidentalis 'Smaragd'.

how did you transport them from seller to your yard??? could any of it be wind damage in transport ... water when they need water ... almost nothing needs water every day.. in the spring ... btw.. where are you .... big city name?? i dont see wilting .. maybe see some dage from hoiking them around town.. from grower.. to seller.. to you ... what is your native soil ... does it perk.. or drain properly??? see link for proper watering.. review the whole thing.. lets talk about anything you might have done differently ... https://sites.google.com/site/tnarboretum/Home/planting-a-tree-or-shrub imo.. they are SLIGHTLY STRESSED ... from the whole process from grower to you ... they are not hungry.. fert is not an option right now ... proper deep watering.. with near drying in between is all you need .. or they need ... dig holes if you need to find out about moisture at depth ... hand trowel.. or tablespoon 3 to 6 inches deep in gob planted and in surrounding soil ... report what you find ... ken