Tag Archives: Trees

Mark & Ben Cullen: In Favour of Real (Trees)

Christmas Ornaments
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Garden Tips From Mark & Ben

Every year we receive emails asking if we recommend the use of real trees vs. artificial for Christmas.  This is an opportunity to finally set the record straight on this issue.

In our opinion, real Christmas trees are the winner, hands down.  The fresh cut Christmas tree that you buy off the lot, or from a reliable retailer, is plantation grown, not cut from the wild.  It is planted, nurtured, and harvested like any agricultural crop. This one, though, takes up to 10 years to produce a marketable specimen.

The tree that is planted in the ground is 3 to 4 years old at the time.  Therefore, the tree that you buy may be up to 14 years old from seed germination to the day that you decorate it.

Fresh cut trees are, well, fresh.  They are cut in late fall and trucked to retailers across the country in early November.   They do not ‘dry out’ while they are outdoors but they can dry out in your home quite quickly, which is why it is important that you place your tree indoors only when you are ready to enjoy it and that you use a tree stand with a large water capacity and that you keep it filled with water.

The land on which Christmas trees grow (about 40,000 acres in Canada) is generally ‘marginally’ productive farmland.  You would not want to grow a food crop on much of it as it is rocky, acidic and often hard to access.  Deer and other wildlife forage through Christmas tree farms.  They enjoy the protection that they provide, and many songbirds use the trees for nesting.

 

The Trees

Mark’s favourite cut Christmas tree is the Fraser fir (Abies fraseri).  It has a lovely evergreen scent, the needles are soft to the touch, it holds moisture in its needles longer than most species reducing ‘needle drop’ which further prevents a lot of clogged vacuum cleaners around New Years.

His second favourite tree is the Balsam fir (Abies balsamea), for many of the same reasons he loves the Fraser, but the needles are shorter and therefore you won’t hang as many ornaments on it.

The Scots pine (not ‘Scotch’) (Pinus sylvestris) is a native of Scotland, with long, stiff needles.  The trunk is often not straight, though a good specimen can be.  Needle retention is average.  A generation ago it was #1 on the market by far but now represents a fraction of it.

White spruce (Picea glauca) is a problem indoors.  If you are going to bring one home for Christmas, do yourself a favour and keep it out of doors until a couple of days before Christmas and take it back out a couple of days afterwards.  The needles drop like rain when they become dehydrated, which won’t take long.

We spray Wilt-Pruf on cut Christmas tree before we bring it indoors as this anti-desiccant helps to hold moisture in the needles, reducing needle drop and fire hazard.

For many Canadians, a fresh cut Christmas tree can be recycled by just leaving it at the end of your driveway for municipal services to pick it up. You paid for this service when you paid your taxes.  Wise people take advantage of it.  Much of that mulch is used in public parks in the spring to protect the root zone of permanent trees and shrubs.

So, fresh cut Christmas trees look good, smell nice, are environmentally the right choice, they produce jobs for Canadians and habitat for wildlife while growing.

We rest our case.

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Article originally appeared in Reno & Decor December/January 2017 

 

Winterizing Tips

Wrapping Cedars
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Mark and Ben Cullen Garden Tips

Winterizing Tips

Those of us who love the outdoors and enjoy puttering around the yard are always looking for an excuse to do something in the fresh air. If you thought you were done with this year’s lawn and garden, we have a question: Have you taken care of the following?

  • Wrapped cedars with two layers of burlap. Cedars nearest a road (and on the east side of it, especially where they are susceptible to westerly winds full of salt spray) are most vulnerable.       Wrap them with a layer of burlap to prevent the permanent damage of salt and wrap them again to protect them from the drying effects of the wind, especially if they are exposed to the north or west.
  • Fertilize your lawn. This time of year provides an opportunity to apply the most important application of lawn food. Why? Your lawn will absorb the nutrients of a fall lawn food before it goes to sleep for the winter. Like a bear that forages before bedding down for the winter, your lawn stores nutrients and sugars in its roots right now in anticipation of the long cold winter ahead. Look for a fertilizer formula, like CIL 12-0-18.
  • Protect fruit trees. If we get an average dump of snow this winter, bunnies and mice can do a lot of damage to fruit trees that are less than 6 years old by nibbling away the bark with their rather sharp teeth. With little to fill their tummies in winter, they resort to this sort of thing. “Bark is better than nothing.” they must be thinking. Wrap the trunk of each tree with a plastic spiral that extends about a metre up the trunk. After about 6 years or so, the trunk of most trees has become too tough even for rodents to enjoy. Be sure to wrap crabapples and flowering cherries as rodents don’t know fruiting from non-fruiting trees that flower.
  • Compost. All of your leaves are down and you no doubt have raked them off your lawn and on to your garden. Good.       If you have a compost pile or bin, now is an excellent time to empty the contents onto your garden.       Spread it with a rake and let it sit there over the winter. Come early spring, earthworms will pull the raw compost under the surface of the soil and convert it into nitrogen-rich castings (poop). If you have not built or purchased a compost, now is a good time to do it as there is no shortage of yard ‘waste’ (actually a ‘resource’), grass clippings and fallen leaves to fill it.

Rhododendrons and other wind-sensitive evergreens like taxus (yews) and boxwood, are best protected with one application of Wilt-Pruf. It prevents the drying effects of wind and extraordinarily low humidity during a Canadian winter.  Save what is left in the bottle to apply to your fresh cut Christmas tree.  It works better than ANY preservative.

For more information and to answer over 10,000 gardening questions, visit www.markcullen.com and sign up for Mark and Ben’s free monthly newsletter.