By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine
Every year, the weekend after Thanksgiving, my wife and I set up our Christmas tree. The trick is to keep it fresh from Thanksgiving to Christmas, which is a week longer than what is usually recommended. Here's how we do it.
To make sure it's absolutely fresh, we cut our own tree at a local Christmas tree farm. In our area, cost is about the same as the price of a parking-lot tree. This year we chose a 'Friesenberg' noble fir (Abies procera). That variety was originally selected at Mt. St. Helens for form and color by Danish horticulturists.
As soon as we got it home we cut another 1/2 inch off the bottom of the trunk and set the tree in a stand that we filled with water. It's essential that the time between the last cut and contact with water is very brief—I shoot for five minutes, max—so the cut bottom won't develop a callus that interferes with water uptake.
Once the tree is in place the main job is watering, even with a large reservoir. For example, the water level in our stand dropped an inch in the first two hours after we set up our 'Friesenberg'. We simply have to keep topping it off every few hours for the first few days (and the first couple of nights) after bringing it home. Then water uptake naturally slows down. Attentive hydration is your best protection against a Christmas tree fire—a frighteningly fast and fearsome thing. If the water supply drops below the bottom of the trunk even once, the cut surface will callus, and the only remedy is taking the tree out, recutting the bottom, and putting in back in place. Do that once when ornaments are in place and you'll never miss a watering again.
Not all trees suck up water at the same rate. Ask somebody who knows trees before you cut. Grand firs are the most thirsty, but the most fragrant trees as well. And, like Douglas firs, grand firs are very often sheared when you buy them, so they're very dense (and more needles mean more transpiration). I favor the other true firs because I like their unsheared shapes and colors better.
Most big Christmas tree farms have bailers (below) that wrap trees in string to you can fit them into the trunk of your car or on the roof. I paid a couple of dollars extra for bailing, and it's worth it if you don't have a truck.
In the past, we've used a beautiful subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa) as a live tree, and loved it during the five years we had it. But the down side is that live trees are very heavy to move, keep growing bigger and heavier every year, and bring spiders and slugs inside. If you buy one of these, hose it down well the day before you bring it in, make sure you have waterproof floor protection under it, and precheck the bottom of the container for creepy crawlies.
