If no needles (leaves) at all, then it is dead. All new plantings will need regular deep waterings through the first couple of growing seasons to become properly established.

Much of the east was rather, um, damp, until August. So it is more likely that the problem was too much, rather than too little water.

i have had some pines lose all their leaves.. and resprout in spring...

the future is in the buds ... show us a pic of them ...

but odds are.. its a goner ... pics????

ken

Well, you east coasters would know better about your weather conditions than I (although the weather records at Rutgers is showing year to date rainfall right where it should be) the remark that lead to the thought of lack of adequate water was remote berm area. Berms by definition tend to be very well drained and prone to dry soils and it is never a good idea to rely only or primarily on rainfall for irrigation of first year plantings.

I'll take some pictures when I get a chance.

This is a long berm area. The builder planted about 30 trees on the berm in 2003. I still lost a couple of trees for no apparent reasons. We have nice spring and fall. But late summer drought is terrible. I tried to haul water in my wheel barrel to water some of the trees. But it is just not practical.

Sandy took out a few more. So I decided to replace them this spring. So I planted 3 white pines and about 7 Norway spruce. I bought 3' tall trees in containers. The price was decent. Most of them are from last year's stock.

I planted some of them in early spring. They are doing quite well. Then I planted 3 more about 6 weeks later. Those three trees are struggling. Again, I tried to water them as much as I can. But I can't babysit them when they are hundreds feet away from water source.

I do not think the late trees were doing quite well at nursery. No new growth when I bought them (in May?)

Well, I think they are lost. I still have a few seedlings in pots. I may just take out the old spruce and re-plant the potted one. I'll leave the other two spruces out there since they still have green needles since spring. But no new growth.

Monthly records would be a lot more informative. Average rainfall runs pretty close to the legendary 1" per week. Since we had an incredibly dry early fall, there had to be above average rain at some point.

A fair amount of this is also going depend on what type of soil the berm is made from.

It sounds like the trees had issues before purchase.