Christmas Tree Growers
Fir Store
By Tamara Scully
While most of us tend to think about Christmas trees only around this time of the year, tree farmers must plan years in advance, provide year-round care, and invest time, labor, and love into a crop which takes 7-15 years from planting to harvest. A healthy dose of patience is definitely a job requirement.
According to the New Jersey Christmas Tree Association (NJCTGA), the first retail Christmas tree lot opened in 1851 in New York City, supplied with trees cut from the Catskill Mountains. While these first Christmas trees were harvested from old timber stands, that is not the case with local New Jersey-grown trees. Christmas trees are grown as a non-food crop on tree farms. As a renewable resource, ideally planted on land not suitable for food production, a well-managed sustainable tree farming keeps the land healthy in many ways.
Choosers and cutters who come to Glenview Farm have a magnificent setting from which to procure their Christmas trees at the base of the Kittatinny Ridge in Blairstown.
Much like choosing locally-grown produce instead of processed foods, opting for a non-artificial tree for your holiday decor can impact the local environment, local economy, even rural landscapes. Using a real tree can help to keep open land preserved, farmers in business, and promote conservation issues. For their own sake, tree farmers are concerned with the health of soil and water, preventing erosion, and growing a crop that, according to the National Christmas Tree Growers Association, provides a daily output of oxygen, per acre, for 18 people!
Although not all tree farmers are members of the association, Northwest
New Jersey boasts over three dozen tree farms that are associated with
NJCTGA, which is dedicated to providing education, information, marketing,
and promotion for growers of Christmas trees.
Like all farmers, a Christmas tree grower must first determine the land's potential for growing a bountiful and profitable crop. Soil type and fertility, amounts of daylight, spacing of the trees, temperature and watering requirements, pest issues, labor needs, and weed control must all be noted and addressed.
Related to the traditional balsam fir and its southern cousin, the Fraser fir, Canaan fir is somewhat new to the Christmas tree market. One of 25 types of trees grown at the Perfect Christmas Tree Farm, its fast growth rate makes it popular with growers as well.
According to grower John Curtis, who currently serves as one of the NJCTGA directors and has been growing trees for 40 years, only one NJ farmer grows trees from seed. The rest are purchased as seedlings because the trees are not mature enough to reproduce until they are approximately 20 years old. Thus, most growers plant seedlings that are 1-2 years old, either as bare root plants or plugs.
The seedlings are then placed directly into the field, or put into special beds for several more years. It is easier to provide any needed irrigation to seedlings in temporary beds than in the fields. Plus, seedlings may be less than a foot tall at this early stage, and can be easily damaged in the field. Seedlings nurtured in temporary beds must be replanted permanently in the field several years later. Since transplanting is stressful these trees will again require some TLC later in life.
Farmers employ different planting strategies, depending on circumstances. A field can be replanted after each year's harvest, interspersing mature trees with younger transplants. Or, if a farmer harvests all the trees from one field and replants it simultaneously, then the trees are all roughly the same size and age, and the planting can be done with a machine.
John Curtis scouts his trees for bugs.
Other issues facing Christmas tree growers include deer damage, pests, pruning needs, and diseases some of which can kill an entire crop of trees. Considering that the average Christmas tree, under ideal conditions, won't be ready for harvest for almost a decade, this can mean a loss of several years' revenue if the farmer has not practiced crop diversity or has not planted regularly.
Kathie Enz, of in Washington, Warren County, has been growing trees for 28 years. Hidden Hollow has good, but rocky soil, and some steep slopes, making it hard to farm food crops. Once a dairy, this 200-year old farm is "one of the few colonial farms left in New Jersey," says Enz. "The impetus is that people come every year, year after year,.. and they say 'we are so glad that you're here,'" Enz adds. But families could not have the traditional visit to the tree farm if Enz, and other tree farmers, were not hard at work all year long.
With
good management practices numerous varieties planted in the fields
and continual replenishment with new seedlings each yearHidden
Hollow has trees of every shape and size. Enz has an expansive selection
of large trees available for choose and cut. She even has some that are
too large, and which she will cut and "top" for pre-cut sales." We
prune them for as long as we can," Enz explains, but after a certain
height, they are too difficult to maintain, and too big for most homes.
Deer have been a problem says Enz, especially devastating to young pines. The fields at Hidden Hollow are not fenced. Enz has decided that the pines are not going to survive the deer, so she will plant other more resistant varieties. Although Curtis has decided to fence his Phillipsburg property to keep out the deer, trees that have already sustained damage, notably bare spots on the trunks where the deer have rubbed their horns and damaged the new branch growth, are allowed to grow to maturity. They are then harvested, cut above the damaged section, and made "perfect" again
An infection killed many of the Douglas Firs in this area of the country about two years ago. Instead of spraying her crop with chemicals, Enz allowed the disease to run its course. The trees that survived are now resistant to the disease, and should continue to thrive, she predicts.
Curtis also suffered losses due to the disease. He now plants numerous species of trees at his Perfect Christmas Tree Farm, experimenting with which grow best under what conditions. 25 tree varieties are planted on his historic Phillipsburg farm where he and his wife Cynthia, who is new to growing Christmas trees, combined their love of history and farming to purchase the land and restore the farmhouse and outbuildings.
The diversity of varieties that the Curtis' planted can help guard against losses due to disease. However, some pests require two species of trees to finish their life cycle, and farmers need to know what not to plant together, Curtis cautions.
Curtis and Enz both emphasized that they handpick insects off of their trees year-round, before any damage can be done. They also keep the fields mowed to discourage rodents, and prune the trees regularly for optimal fullness, branch strength, and shape. Field spacing is another concern. Farmers who try to grow trees closer together, for more yield per acre, face challenges with equipment, non-optimal growth patterns, and difficult harvesting at maturity. Removing the pinecones allows the tree more strength to its branches, Curtis explains.
Being new to farming, Cynthia Curtis has a lot to learn from her husband. But she already has some innovative ideas that she wishes to implement, such as growing trees in pots, as an alternative to freshly dug and balled trees, when wanted for post-holiday transplants into the landscape.
What Cynthia Curtis already knows is that growing Christmas trees is a labor of love. As Kathie Enz has learned, "It's a lot more demanding than most people expect."
New Jersey has such a high population density, combined with an influx of customers from NYC, that Christmas tree growers here keep pretty busy. Many offer pre-cut as well as choose-and-cut options. And most offer some type of entertainment. The farms are a destination for many families, and holiday music, hot cocoa, farm animals, Christmas supplies, and wreath sales have come to be expected by the public, and an added source of sales income for the farmer.
Popular tree varieties have traditionally been Scotch Pine and Douglas Fir. However, both Curtis and Enz noted that today's customers have a range of tastes. Some other trees with customer appeal are the Balsam Firs, which are the "old-fashioned" look tree, and the Concolor Fir, which has a light, citrus scent. The Blue Spruce is noted for its color, and its stiff, prickly needles.
The demand for spruce, fir, and pines - real Christmas trees- can be met right here in New Jersey's Great Northwest. Within these species, individual varieties provide even more choices differing color, scent, needle shape, texture, needle retention, and branch strength. Choosing that tree at an area farm, amidst holiday trappings and cheer, might just become a family tradition.