Eric:

Pecan aren't the easiest to start under the best conditions outdoors in good soil. I'd keep your tree in the shade and don't apply any manure or fertilizer. With no leaves it's not using much water. So don't keep it wet. That might be what went wrong, too wet.

Pecan are best planted in place during mid winter. I'd not plant one in a pot. At best that is only temporary.

Thanks, fruitnut. Ideally, I might have gotten the trees in the fall and planted them right away, and if I had known we'd have so much rain this spring I might have planted them this spring (although the late freezes would have been hard on them.) I also bought 2 pecan trees last year. I planted one and potted the other to plant later (in the fall.) The one that I kept in a pot for the extra year looks so much better now than the one that I planted directly. It had seemed to me that getting a really good, big root system built up before planting was really helpful for withstanding summer drought stress. And that was all that much more a consideration for me this time, because I want to plant these two trees where I won't very well be able to water them.
You may be right about the pots being too wet. Maybe I should cut even more drainage holes in that one pot. I don't suppose it will hurt, and I haven't got much to lose at this point.
I had planned to plant out both these trees this fall, by the way, as soon as the ground softens up again with whatever early fall rains we (hopefully) get.
Thanks again!

To follow up on my question from before, I noticed today that the pecan tree that never leafed out had a whole thick cluster of shoots growing from the trunk right at the soil line. None had opened up yet into leaves. The wood above the graft is still green, though, so I rubbed all those shoots off, hoping the tree might just yet somehow put some energy into the varietal portion. If it happens again should I give up and try to at least salvage a rootstock to graft onto next year (or the year after)?

Yes I would probably give up if it pushes shoots from the base again, and hope you get a rootstock instead of nothing.

I had an interesting pecan experiment this year, one bareroot tree from Englands put in last fall which looked very healthy when I put it in, and one small potted tree from Starks put in this spring. The potted tree is kicking the pants off the bareroot one, it looks far more healthy and has put on a lot more growth. Something to keep in mind if you are interested in growing pecans. Too bad Starks doesn't have a better variety selection.

Scott

I just got to wondering about "forcing a bud." Isn't that a term? I don't really know what it means but I feel like I heard something about making a cut somewhere that makes a particular bud more inclined to swell and grow. This isn't something I could do with my pecan, is it? What if I pruned the scion back pretty hard? Would that help encourage one of the lower buds on the 2 yr old wood that didn't begin to swell earlier this spring?