COUNTRY SKILLS: Keep A Living Christmas Tree

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

A while back I stump-cut from a grove of small (10—15-foot, 15 —25-year-old) wild balsam firs growing in a sunny meadow beyond the spring at the bottom of our apple orchard. I'd pruned the tops (using a stepladder) over two or three years till they assumed a true conical shape and filled in. For Christmas trees, I removed the top two-thirds of a tree, cutting it off somewhere between waist and chest high. Then I trimmed the trunk down as low as I could, leaving at least three good branches near the ground. The stump sprouts all grew and the little grove will begin supplying a second generation of Christmas trees off the stump in a few years.

If a stump grows multiple leaders that are well spaced around the old trunk, it may grow several potential Christmas trees at once. Usually, one will be the more shapely and vigorous and is allowed to grow while the others are removed or pruned back. With care, one old stump can provide a succession of usable trees, one every five years or so. There's no rea son why your descendants one or two hundred years from now couldn't cut trees off your stumps.

Ideally, I suppose you will rescue trees from being shaded out in the deep woods, transplant them to sun, and in time cut Christmas trees off the stump from the most vigorous. However, it takes a tree at least a year to grow a foot in height and more like 10 or 15 years to grow a "stumpcuttable" Christmas tree-size leader. You'd have to spend most of a lifetime in one place, or come into possession of a going stump-cut Christmas tree farm. Few of us are so fortunate these days, I'm afraid.

Bought Trees

If you don't have your own woodlot, you can always buy live, nursery-grown Christmas trees. The tree is root pruned and trimmed to shape over a decade or so, then dug, balled, and driven to market. So, the cost is the same $100 and up you'd pay for a specimen lawn tree. Treat it as you would a tree you've dug yourself and, after Christmas, plant it outside.

If you plant trees permanently in the lawn of a small-acreage country place, visualize it as them as they will be a generation hence. Plant them a good 15 feet apart and with the neighbors in mind. I know of one pair of ex-Christmas trees that were planted along the property line by folks who didn't realize that, in 20 years' time, the trees would grow high enough to commit criminal trespass by shading out the north side neighbors' vegetable garden and their dwarf pear tree (planted in `75), just as it was beginning to bear.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print