Home and Living

Growing your own Christmas tree takes a little time, but it translates to a greener, more fragrant, longer-lasting tree infused with the energy you put into its planting and care. With a little land and patience, it’s not hard to do.

While they’re growing, real Christmas trees support life by absorbing carbon dioxide and other gases and emitting fresh oxygen. Every acre of Christmas trees grown produces the daily oxygen requirement for 18 people. In the United States, there are approximately 500,000 acres of Christmas trees, which means that 9 million people a day are supplied with oxygen thanks to these trees. It takes a Christmas tree an average of five to 16 years to grow, and as they grow, Christmas trees support life by absorbing carbon dioxide and other gases while giving off fresh oxygen.

The farms that grow Christmas trees stabilize soil, protect water supplies and provide refuge for wildlife while creating scenic green belts. Often, Christmas trees are grown on soil that doesn’t support other crops. Real Christmas trees are grown on farms just like any other crop. To ensure a constant supply, Christmas tree growers plant one to three new seedlings for every tree they harvest.

Whether you have your own back 40 or just a small plot of undeveloped land, you may already have one or more potential Christmas trees. You must first know how to recognize one. Perfect cone shape? Fullness? Proper size? Forget all that for now. Initially you’re scouting for a small, healthy native conifer with a straight stem. It can be fir, spruce, or pine.

If the tree is bare on one side, you might try clearing out any growth around it to admit more sunlight. If adjacent siblings crowd it, you may want to transplant it. In the spring divide at least one sapling from a clump of naturally seeded balsam fir. The entangled roots yield quite easily in the soggy soil. Relocate the tree to a compost-filled hole in an open area around the house or garden. After a couple years, begin pruning it to the traditional cone shape.

If you have a yard but no woods to speak of, you can start by purchasing a live young evergreen at a nursery or garden center next spring. It can be the traditional balsam fir or a spruce (white or blue), Douglas fir or even Scotch pine. Plant it in a temporary location in a sunny part of your yard. It will grow faster if you apply an acidic fertilizer or compost. Plant a new tree faithfully every year. These small trees will serve as shrubs, adding year-round greenery to your landscape and providing shelter for birds.

A two-foot sapling becomes a good table tree in a couple years. Wait three more, and you’ll have a standard five-foot floor model. Allow an additional year for every foot of height desired. Meanwhile, your successive annual plantings are maturing for future holidays, so that after the first harvest, you’ll get a tree every year.

This method encourages small children to identify various tree species and assist in their care and planting. They enjoy comparing their own growth to that of a favorite tree. They also learn something about patience. By the time the first tree is ready, the toddler who helped find and care for it is now grown enough to saw it down. Then again, that child might discover a strange attachment to the tree and decide it’s better left alone. If this happens, all is not lost. You can create some wonderful ornaments to decorate the tree right where it stands. Pinecones rolled in peanut butter and sprinkled with birdseed do well. So do strings of popcorn interspersed with bright red cranberries. Not only will the birds appreciate these delicacies, they’ll probably incorporate the string into their own craft projects come spring.

There are, however, a few tricks that let you have your Christmas tree and cut it, too. Many wild conifers develop a multiple stem. You can cut your tree from one stem, leaving the other(s) in the ground. In a few years, it becomes another Christmas tree. Or, simply cut the top off a tall tree and leave the rest to grow.