There is something extra special about having a real Christmas tree in your home for the holiday season. Like everything else that we use and consume – buying locally is always the best choice. Freshly harvested trees do not shed needles. They emit a lovely scent that permeates the entire house.
Did you know that it takes seven to fourteen years for a tree to reach marketable size? On the prairies, Ray Gaudet of Gaudet Trees ( ) shared with me that here, a tree needs to grow to four or five feet before it grows and put on a foot of growth per year. It takes about ten years to grow a tree from seed to about chest height! During that time, there is a lot of labour that goes into the growth of every tree. Ray says that to grow a quality Christmas tree you need to touch every tree every year. Along with the regular care that goes into growing any plant, it is also necessary to do pruning and shaping to ensure you will get the perfect tree to grace your home over the holidays.
There is a shortage of Christmas trees available due to labour shortages and environmental issues like drought and unseasonably late frosts as well as many other factors. The major recession in the United States several years ago also resulted in creditors and US banks cutting off funding to nurseries and Xmas tree growers. Due to all of these factors, these smaller, family businesses lost their capacity to keep going and now we are beginning to see the longer-term results. As it takes years of care to grow a marketable Christmas tree the inevitable result is a shortage of the product.
It is so unfortunate that as a small business owner/operator today, the toll of being everything from the grower to the harvester, the trucker, the office manager, the marketer and everything else that is necessary including always facing a steeper slope to climb eventually gets tired and needs to cut back to have any quality of life. Unfortunately, when you have everything required to run a business, when you cut back you have to cut back a lot which means the business cannot continue in many cases.
When selecting your tree, it is important to give a fresh 2cm (3/4 inch) cut off the base of the tree and ensure that while in the stand it is constantly covered with fresh water. Please note that no other additives other than water are required to keep your tree nice and fresh. For the first fill of water, ensure it is nice and hot to ensure the sap is warmed sufficiently to allow that water to flow up and throughout the tree. Also, as long as the tree is kept in water it is not a fire hazard and can last an extremely long time before becoming dry. When it does become time to move the tree out, I like to use it as a lovely bird feeder/house for our fine-feathered friends for the remainder of the winter. In spring, it is chipped and becomes garden mulch.
Support local, support real and enjoy all the benefits of having a real Christmas tree this holiday season.
Hanbidge is the Lead Horticulturist with Orchid Horticulture. Find us at ; by email at [email protected]; on Facebook @orchidhort and Instagram at #orchidhort. Tune into GROW Live on our Facebook page or check out the Youtube channel GROW
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