"I water it twice a week now..."

Are you checking for proper soil moisture?

"...and give it some miracle gro tree spikes."

STOP!!! Pounding snake oil spikes in the ground is not the solution!

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Actually, your tree doesn't look all that bad for that size tree, planted just before the heat of summer. Take a look at the link below for some additional info:

Planting a Tree or Shrub

Agree with all of the above. it takes a year or three for new transplants to get going. Yours looks typical for a newly-planted. And a tip of my horticulturist's hat to Brandon for catching the utter folly of fertilizer spikes. Question to all: Do you think that we here at Houzz Trees forum can make enough bad noise about those ridiculous items to see them finally go away? And not poking at you, Hopper. How is the non-professional person to know that the garden center has some real bogus items on the shelf.

+oM

Are they that bad? What should I use instead?

use NOTHING BUT PROPER WATER ...

it is a tree... it needs water.. to regrow the roots that were cut off ...

it is not a child.. it does not need to be fed ... NEVER!!! ... nor educated... etc ....

besides.. look at that lawn.. it is fertd .... when this tree regrows the 99% of the roots cut off for transplanting... it will get more that it will ever need.. from the lawn ...

you need to insure.. that you are getting water into the root zone ... deep ... if you are not .. then you arent accomplishing much ... describe how you water ...

finally ... the base problem here.. is you need for instant gratification ... this thing can live for over 100 years ... and on some level ... you are not happy about it after 6 months ... just relax ... perfect water ...

at this point.. my only expectation.. would be that it isnt dead ... and yours isnt ,since it still has green leaves ;.. so ... high five.. and relax ...

i would not expect it to fill in for 2 or 3 years ... its will be doing all its work underground ... and we wont be able to see that all going on ... you just have to have faith ... based on the green leaves retained ...

good luck

ken

I have a drip irrigation system on it. With a bubbler. The bubbler is set at the max release. Twice a week for 30 minutes.

Is there any way to tell if it's getting proper water?

If it has leaves it is getting proper water. The first year they sleep. The second year they creep. The third year they leap. See Ken's excellent advice. Chill!

Best to stick actual fingers in soil, to assess moisture status. Then be advised-moist is adequate. sometimes, due to dissimilarity of rootball soil and surrounding backfill stuff, one or the other may be dry while the other is wet, so do pay attention. As to fertilizer, new transplants have lost most of their root system. So....what it needs to do is regrow roots, and it will do so faster if soil is not excessively fertile. For the most part, trees are adapted to fairly low-nitrogen situations. Probably the best thing you can do, aside from proper water management is to keep a nice, wide ring of organic mulch around the tree, but not up around the base of the trunk. No "landscape fabric either, please. That ruins the effect of slowly-decomposing organic matter enriching the soil, in just the way trees like.

Oh yeah, and the thing about those spikes is , it's completely bogus for there to be high concentrations of salts (that's what such fertilizers are) in one spot, then none in another. If and when you ever do fertilize, simply broadcast the material over the top of that mulch, and perhaps surrounding turf, being careful not to burn said turf. Easy does it in fertilizing trees, and none initially. Some day, maybe three years hence, you could take any spikes you've still got left, grind them up, and then distribute over the top. It's not the material that's bad, it's the delivery system.

+oM

"Is there any way to tell if it's getting proper water?"

Did you read my link above?

New trees should be mulched and planted without grass very close. Fertilizer should be used if a need for it is indicated by experienced visual assessment or a soil test. And only the right fertilizer, with the right ingredients will produce an improvement. It is neither correct to never fertilize because a planting consists of trees nor to automatically fertilize regardless of individual circumstances. There are some who say chemical fertilizers should never be used on anything, but that is a separate subject from whether or not a given planting could benefit from nutrient supplementation - all plants on deficient soils may respond markedly to deficiency correction, including trees.

As Embo said I would place a decent sized mulch ring around the tree, killing somewhere between a 3-4' radius of grass from the trunk of the tree. Your tree will establish more quickly, mower blight will be avoided, and all the moisture that fall in that radius will aid in the growth of the tree.

Thankyou everyone