How to Buy a Really Fresh Christmas Tree

Finding the best value in a cut Christmas tree optimizes the holiday energy in your home and your personal enjoyment, enhances the beauty of your seasonal interior decorating, and improves the safety factor. After you throw your tree out on New Year’s Day, if it burns easily before March, you missed the mark.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Plastic or visqueen sheet large enough to line the inside of your trunk or cab (to catch needles and sap).
• Length of small rope 3 to 6 feet to hold your trunk lid in place while driving home with your tree hanging out.

1. Decide what your priorities and preferences are before shopping. If you’re looking for best price, maybe you should go ahead and invest in an artificial tree that you can use year after year or go to the woods with a small crosscut saw (of course you still need to get it home without damaging it).
2. Determine where to shop. If price is still your key motivator but you insist on fresh cut, then you will probably end up buying from a large retailer in the $30 to $40 range. This is a great price, but your tree was cut before Halloween, so it’s already in worse shape than a fresh tree will be three months later if properly cared for.
3. Purchase your tree from the same person each year if possible, e.g., the top choices are probably as follows:
   1) The mountain farmer who sells only trees he grows from a rented lot and cuts either Thanksgiving Day or the day before, so if you buy your tree the day after Thanksgiving when he opens for business, you have the potential of a top grade Frazier fur cut one day earlier. Prices are $45 to $100 for a 6 to 9 foot tree of varying shape and fullness.
   2) Take delivery from a mountain grower-wholesaler who drops the tree off at the house for the wholesale rate (half the retail). Downside is that you may not know such a person, and you don’t get to pick out the tree, but it’s always fairly fresh and a reasonable value.
   3) Select a fresh tree from a local lot where the vendor has been selling trees there for many years. The price is 20 to 30 percent higher than the grower’s lot, and the tree was cut slightly sooner.

Tips & Warnings

• A good service to expect is free cutting of the trunk (slice a half inch off the bottom with a small chainsaw) and netting so it is easy to load (and unload) in your trunk, van or pickup.
• The closer to your home you buy your tree the more likely you will get it home safely and without damaging it.
• Get your tree in water immediately and make sure the trunk doesn’t come out of water again till you take it down (best to plan to set it up as soon as you get home, but better to buy it fresh, get it in water right away, and transfer it later to a tree stand than to buy it later).
• Leave the netting on the tree till it’s set up inside your house.
• Allow lots of time to look through the trees and select the one you really want (you’ll be living with this tree for possibly the next month).
• It’s difficult to walk away from a tree lot without buying a tree, so check out the places first where you’re less likely to deal with the owner.
• Avoid taking much time or advice from anyone before you’re ready to buy so you won’t feel obligated to buy something even though you don’t feel comfortable (you can always say you’ll be back later and you’re just there to check out the trees ahead of bringing a truck).

Who Can Help:

• Find Tree & Shrub Services Here. Compare Up to 4 Quotes, Free Service & No Obligation.