How to Care for Christmas Trees
Live Christmas trees, like the ones sold at our Oak Park Christmas tree lot, need care and attention to ensure they’re still fresh and healthy for Christmas. Like a flower in a vase, Christmas trees are plants that need water and oxygen to survive. But unlike a flower in a vase, a Christmas tree is often taller than 6 feet, and supports hundreds and thousands of needles, each needing water.
When you buy a Christmas tree at Sandhill Christmas Trees, our trees are cut as close to the purchase date as possible, ensuring that they retain as much water in them as possible. But once you buy your tree and bring it home, the tree relies on you to water it as much as it needs to keep its needles and branches hydrated, strong, and healthy. Below are commonly-used Christmas tree care tips.
Christmas Tree Care Tips
Make a fresh cut to remove about a 1/2-inch thick disk of wood from the base of the trunk before putting the tree in the stand. Make the cut perpendicular to the trunk axis. When you buy at Sandhill Christmas Trees in Oak Park, our tree lot workers always give the tree a fresh cut. But if you purchase your tree to bring home and set outside or in a garage, and don’t plan to set it up in your house until a few weeks after, you’ll need to have it cut before you put it up indoors.
To display the tree indoors, use a Christmas tree stand that’s large enough to hold the size of your tree with an adequate water holding capacity. Most tree stands are sold as having a maximum height. It’s recommended that you buy a tree stand with a maximum size larger than than of your tree. Our tree lot sells sturdy Christmas tree stands that hold any size of tree.
As a general rule, stands should provide 1 quart of water per inch of stem diameter. The bottom of the tree should be submerged about 2 or 3 inches. Never let the
The temperature of the water that you fill the tree stand with it’s not the most important part, but you should use warm to hot water to ensure that the tree takes up the water quickly and thoroughly.
Check the water in the tree stand daily to make sure that the level of water does not go below the base of the tree. With many stands, there can still be water in the stand even though the base of the tree is no longer submerged in water. When the bottom of the tree is no longer submerged in water, the bottom of the tree will dry out and close up, preventing the tree from drinking any further. Should this happen, a second fresh cut should be made on the base of the tree.
Always keep trees away from sources of heat like fireplaces, space heaters, heat vents, and direct sunlight such as in a main window.
You do not need to add additional ingredients like plant food, sugar, soda water, or other home remedies. Trees, like the one you purchase for your holiday celebration, need water more than anything. If the tree was purchased from a tree lot like Sandhill Christmas Trees in Oak Park, where the tree was cut late in the year, as long as you keep the tree well watered and away from heat sources, your tree will be healthy and help ring in your holiday.