Growing a live holiday tree - WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-

December 22, 2011

It's nice to buy a Christmas tree that still has its roots, so that after Christmas, you could plant it and enjoy it year after year! You can plant them every year and soon you'll have a whole forest of Christmas trees!

If you go to the garden center you'll find live Christmas trees for sale. Look at the bottom of the tree and you see they're in a container.

First you bring the tree inside after acclimating it in the garage for a few days. Put it in a metal basin so that you can keep the soil nice and moist, but not stain the floors. You only want to have this tree indoors for about seven to ten days, that's it. 

Afterward, take all of the ornaments off, bring it out to a garage or a shed, but not right outside, for about three to four days so the tree can harden off a little bit.   

It's sort of a transition so the tree doesn't go from your warm living room to five degrees!

Hopefully you were smart enough to dig your hole beforehand. Luckily, it hasn't been that cold, so you might still be able to do that now. So dig the hole, take all of the soil out and put it in the garage so it doesn't freeze up. Then when you put your Christmas tree in the hole, you put the soil back in, put some mulch on it, water it and it should be all set for the rest of the winter. It's better to to plant it now, rather than try to hang onto it inside until spring.

Now certain Christmas trees like the dwarf Alberta spruce, are a little more sensitive to the cold, so you might want to wrap those with some burlap. But these regular blue spruce and other kinds of balsams, they're fine, they'll be happy out there, and in a couple of years, Santa will come visit your Christmas tree forest.

By Charlie Nardozzi