Live Christmas Trees Out ALREADY???

Went to Kroger today, and damn if they didn’t have lines of trees on their front walk ready to be bought!

Will they last, even with being watered all the way to Christmas?

Thanks

Q

I think they will, if they’re properly prepared (make a fresh cut, etc.) When the kids were at home, we’d sometimes put up the tree right after Thanksgiving. It’d be dropping needles by Christmas, but it still looked okay.

This is around the right time for the first Christmas tree harvests from the tree farms. I’ve seen a few trucks on the road already, heading into the cities and into the US and Eastern Canada. If properly watered, they will last through to Christmas, though they will lose a fair amount of needles and be less pretty than fresh-cut ones.

These trees don’t grow in every climate, so you have to account for the time it takes to ship (truck) them down South; these are generally the first trees cut. Us lucky areas local to the tree farms get fresher trees from later harvests, or we drive on out and cut it down ourselves.

We used to have a farm a few miles away that did pick your own xmas trees. You’d walk into a huge field of trees, find one you liked and the farmer would come and cut it down for you before wrapping it in green mesh. Barely dropped a single needle by xmas. It was our family tradition, with the kids taking it in turn to pick that years tree.
Then they had a few problems with floods and disease and stopped doing it.

Does anyone know of anything similar in the Essex/Herts area of the UK?

Depending on the variety and how you take care of it, they should. It’s only a week and a half before we normally buy ours, and ours still looks great at Christmas and acceptable at New Year’s if I haven’t taken it down by then.

There are live garlands and wreaths at Sam’s Club. I decided to wait a couple of weeks before buying one… if they’re still available then.