Why haven't we always had a live tree?

[CornField]

We just got back from selecting our very first live tree. Man, it's beautiful! As a bonus prize, the whole front of my house smells like evergreen.

[Maple]

1. Tell us about it again

when you're still sweeping up needles...next August.

[realisticphish]

10. lol

but we have a kind of tree...the name escapes me...that holds its needles for almost 2 months. its great


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[knowbody0]

2. that would require foresight and integrity

[bobbieinok]

3. my son stopped me getting live tree

or at least made me think

he said 'Great! Kill a tree to celebrate a birth!'

[arwalden]

5. The Trees Are Grown To Be Cut Down...

... it's a CROP! And... it's already dead. It fulfills its purpose when you buy it and decorate it and enjoy it. Needles and all.

After the holidays, our county takes all the live trees and chops them into mulch... then uses the chips for spreading around trees and flower beds in the public parks and along planted median strips, etc.

Nothing is wasted.

[sbj405]

8. Actually here's another recycling of Christmas trees in PG county

Very ingenious
http://www.anacostiaws.org/streambank.html

[arwalden]

9. Brilliant! I Love it!!! :-)

[izzie]

4. I used to dig hole for it in fall and drop it in after X-mas.

I did not have luck with trying to keep it in a pot until Spring.It would die on me but if I just dropped it in to a hole and pushed dirt in it was OK.

[Occulus]

6. Oh, I CAN'T have a live tree...

there's something about live firs that causes my nasal passages to totally stop up. It doesn't happen outdoors, only indoors. Only with live Christmas trees.

Allergic to Christmas trees. Imagine.

It's so bad for me that I had to request my employer actually remove the live one and get a fake because I simply couldn't breathe with the live one there.

[gaia_gardener]

7. Do you mean live as in "in a pot" or live

as in you (or someone else) cut it down?

If the first, you really shouldn't have it in the house yet. It needs to be outside so that it doesn't come out of dormancy. You can bring it in for a couple of days, but any more and it will die when you put it outside after xmas.

If the latter - we went and cut ours today. Did you know that young trees filter the air "better" than older trees? Also, xmas tree farms (at least in OK) are planted in areas that would otherwise be fallow and un-treed. So, by buying a tree from them we have supported the planting of trees that wouldn't otherwise be planted. The only bad part is that they aren't organic and spray some pretty extreme chemicals.