Are you on a hill or slope? Is the drainage good? Have you had some heat waves? One thing comment I was given recently at a native plant nursery is the problem generally can be watering when it is too warm, rather than just watering per se. Heat + water creates the problem--bacterial/soil pathogen rather than just water, because soil pathogens are generally much more active in warm soil than in cold. Food for thought--I do not know if this applies in your case. Every Ceanothus I've lost has been due to not enough water, rather than too much, but I have light soil, not clay, and slopes.

I trust Dave on the temperature thing because he's got smarts and much more experience than I do. Please forgive the long post, but I'm bad at being concise. I certainly don't intend to be critical, but some of the information can help stave off some common but easily avoidable problems. I'm suspicious about what's going on inside that pot. So tell us--how exactly do you water? Do you give a measured amount, or do you soak the soil? Was the plant's root ball very stiff and dry before you replanted it? What kind of soil did you use? Have you ever checked right after you water to be sure that the old soil gets moist? It's very strange for potting soil to need water more than once a week at most. That makes me think the old soil was very peaty and fine grained, and had become so compacted that it was hydrophobic. The best solution to that is to break up and remove all of the hardened soil and replace it with fresh soil, but this isn't a good time of year to do that kind of work. But simply submerging the pot in a bowl or bucket of water until no more bubbles come up (which may take a while) will rehydrate the compacted soil and make it easier for it to accept water normally. For moisture management, your finger is fine so long as it reaches all the way to the bottom. My concern is that your new pot has a reservoir to catch drained water, which can then be wicked up by the soil and keep the bottom wet. The issue is that roots need air to get the oxygen that lets them do their job, so they suffocate, rot, and die if the soil they colonize is wet for any length of time, and obviously can't supply the plant with water. This adds up to overwatering, which has almost the same symptoms as underwatering. Then the plant has to spend energy regrowing the lost roots, which eventually weakens it. That's why we tell people to remove the reservoir so the pot can drain into a saucer and to remove the drained water right away so it doesn't get taken up again. Lenore

To me it looks like it got wet enough to damage some roots. Dry leaves due to lack of water go tan and crispy for me, turning black after this, is not what I have seen in my experience If the plant is growing new growth the roots have overcome and you will be fine. Trim off the unsightly tips and good luck.

Do you take mulitvitamin/multimineral supplements such as One A Day or Centrum Nallah? The minerals used in these two and nearly all supplements are chemically created minerals produced by humans and the exact same minerals used in so called non organic fertilizers for plants. Such as potassium chloride, magnesium oxide, dibasic calcium phosphate and many more. We use the same elemental elements as plants do. and extract them only in their pure form known as chemical elements found in the periodic table of elements, if you remember high school science. Chemically created synthetic fertilizers are simply a combination of two or more organic elements, sometimes using high heat, to extract the pure chemical element plants can take in, along with humans. We can't eat phosphate rock or limestone but we can extract the elements of phosphorus and calcium we can consume, same for plants. Soda drink has phosphoric acid in it along with tooth paste, Phosphoric acid comes from treating organic phosphate containing material with sulfuric acid, Sulfuric acid is a natural organic salt of sulfur and also organic. So where is the danger? The idea that man made chemical fertilizers are dangerous is a myth and this is where the danger is. I say a dangerous myth because without man made synthesized fertilizers over half to three quarters of the world population would starve. Not may but would without a doubt. People who think only organic is fine only if they know the facts and not try to force everyone to do the same. it would take 30 tons of cow manure to fertilize 1 acre of crop land to produce half the yield they do now. 30 tons of cow poo requires about 4 cows. 4 cows require 8 acres of good forage land per year. Removing the manure to fertilize your crop land would then reduce the forage available next year. The next year even less, and so on until your 4 cows starve. If you did the same with alfalfa each year the source land would become depleted, and any organic source would quickly become depleted. The world would starve, and organic vs chemica is a major rant of mine because people don't know how sensitive the world food supply is and could easily collapse with the wrong laws by the wrong people. 2,7 billion acres are used to feed the world population and people are starving now, this doesn't include land used for livestock. 2.7 billion acres would require manure from 11 billion cows to support the land by ORGANIC means, but wouldn't last long. You can use organic fertilizers as a personal choice but please be aware most of the worlds population would die without man made synthetic fertilizers made from natural elements that are perfectly safe.