Our Monterrey Oak is already full of leaves, but we planted it over a year ago. Last year it started out pretty slowly since it hadn't had a lot of time to become established yet. Sometimes you just need to have patience with new plants. Gently check the limbs. Are they flexible or do the little twigs break off easily? You could try scratching the bark lightly with your fingernail to see if there is any green underneath.

If there are any signs of life, try giving your tree a little TLC. We were told to give all of our trees compost tea and to leave a garden hose running at the base of each of them for 5 minutes every 5 days for the first 6-12 months to help them establish good root systems. We babied our trees last year and now they all look better than our neighbors's trees that have been in place 3 years longer than ours. Good luck with yours.

Chrissy

We are in the same boat! I actually have two Monterrey Oaks in my backyard - both also recently planted by the builder of my new home. One looks great - it is green and full of leaves. The other is just bare branches with buds that aren't doing anything. It is green inside when I scratch the branches, but I'm also very concerned. Keep us posted!

I wouldn't trust builders to do anything right as far as planting trees right.

Is it planted too deep? The root flares should be exposed. (google if you don't know what it is)

Any mulch around them? Mulch should not touch the trunk.

Has the young trees been properly watered? Sometimes they water trees way too much esp during the winter as I've seen that happen during the winter when trees were planted at the new house and it was watered quite often through the winter.

thanks for all the info. The head contractor is coming over tomorrow. I'm going to talk to him. The branches don't show any green (I trimmed a little one off to look), I'll scratch the bark a bit to see.

There is mulch, all the way up to it, in a big fancy ring. I just looked up "root flare" and no, that is not exposed on our trees.

I don't know how much they really watered. When we moved in the sprinkler system (of which there is a sprinkler inside of each mulched tree ring) was set to run 3 times a week, which we haven't changed yet.

I guess I need to figure out if they're really dead, or if they can be rehabbed. They're fairly large for something a builder to put in, about 10' tall. I hope they don't have to be replaced, but I also don't want to have nothing in the yard!

3 times a week! That's excessive. Probably died of overwatering.. If you can't see root flares, it's planted too deep.

here's an update...I was just out there and scraped away the mulch around one of the trees. There were tiny little roots coming up from the bottom and had wrapped around the trunk, just under the mulch.

Then I tried the scrape the bark. But it's so hard, it's cracking and peeling over a lot of the trunk, and I couldn't scrape it at all with my nail. I could go at it with a knife, but of course, that seems like a bad idea!

3 times a week is too much to water, always...or just during the winter?

I snapped off another little twig. It came off easily, and is brown inside. A light brown. There is only a bit of green near one edge, not all the way around. Bad sign?

It is a goner, I'm sorry to say. I have one and it is fully leafed out by now and I live further up north than you do. I don't think the builder did a good job with your tree.

It depends how much water it's put out every time but 3 times during the winter when the tree is not actively growing is way too much. Maybe once or twice a month during the dormant time. When it's planted during the growing season, you should water MODERATELY few times a week for a few weeks before cutting back to watering deeply once a week because of the mix that it came with. The peat mix tends to dry out a bit too quickly. Of course it depends on how the tree is planted. With mulching, it cuts down water evaporation so you don't have to water. The root flares should be exposed and be at the ground level.

If you're looking for large sized tree to replace your tree, I would highly encourage you to look into field grown trees where they would be dug up. I am not a huge fan of large sized container trees (10g and larger) due to poor root system.