Choosing and Caring for your Real Christmas Tree

A real Cut Christmas Tree from Ferndale (4)
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A real cut Christmas Tree has all the nostalgia of our youth, the smell of the outdoors & the family fun of choosing a real Christmas  tree in a special trip.

Choosing a needle holding tree, in a stand that keeps it watered & and with a ‘Clean Removal’ Christmas Tree bag you’re on the way to a reduced stress Christmas. 

Nordmann Fir Christmas Trees are needle holding trees
& our growers prunes each tree every year to produce bushy, compact trees your home. A six foot tree is probably about 10 years old. 

Real Christmas trees are very popular and are worlds apart from the real Christmas trees our parents and grand parents decorated in years past.

The Emerald needle holding trees are the very best for your life. These are our favourite Christmas Trees and now the only variety we stock & recommend.

Simply the Emerald Nordmann Fir is a needle holding tree and has ‘needles’ that are flat & soft. This means your feet won’t be pierced by sharp needles of the traditional Norway Spruce. The introduction from Europe nearly 50 years ago of the Nordmann Fir has changed many peoples idea about real Christmas trees.

The secret with all cut trees is water.

Basically, a cut Christmas tree is a ‘wooden bunch of flowers’. In the same way that you would expect to stand cut flowers in a vase of water, the same applies to real Christmas. trees.  ALWAYS use a Christmas Tree stand that holds water. Consider adding the new watering funnel system available this year to help. See below.

Christmas Tree Stands that are broad enough to hold you tree up & hold water.
New designs for bigger trees available.

Christmas Tree Auto Stop Watering System for easier watering of your cut Christmas tree.

The traditional real Christmas tree is the Norway Spruce has very sharp needles & when it dries out it sheds its needles. Many of us remember the shower of needles mulching the carpet all around the skeleton of the sad looking specimen that used to be a Christmas tree. Not only did these needles create a mess & a job to vacuum them up many needle sharp points stuck in the carpet & revealing themselves bare feet for months afterwards. They do smell nice though. We no longer sell the Norway Spruce.

Choosing a tree

Christmas trees arrive wrapped in netting. These are then usually unwrapped for you see the shape.

It’s worth thinking where your tree will stand at home. It’s rare in a modern home for Christmas trees to stand in the centre of a hall where you can walk all the way around to admire it. Consequently, your tree will end up against a wall. This means if a tree is not a perfectly round tree it doesn’t matter as ‘the back’ wouldn’t be seen. You can, of course, trim off any branches that stick out behind the tree to make it fit.

Find out more about our range.

NEW Bio Plastic Tree Skirt, come Super Bin Bag

Position this bag under your tree as you put it up to use as a tree skirt & then when you are ready to remove your tree pull the bag up and over the tree to seal any falling needles inside it. Then you can safely carry you tree out to your car.

Pull the Bio Plastic Skirt / Super Bin Bag up before removing your Christmas Tree.

Bring you tree back to Ferndale before the end of Sunday 12th January with your receipt & we will recycle your tree into garden mulch. Just show us your receipt. £5 without a receipt. 

When you arrive home

  • Cut 25mm (1″) off the base. This allows water to be drawn up into the tree. Natural resins block these ‘pipes’. Removing a disk of wood solves the problem.
  • Stand your tree in a bucket of water, outside for a few days before moving inside. This means a little time management on your part. Leave the tree in its net.
  • Fit your Christmas tree stand to the tree outside before bringing it in still leaving the net on.
  • Bring the tree indoors, with the stand fitted to the trunk, position & cut off the net. You will find a few needles fall off at this stage. This is normal. If your tree was still growing in a field it would naturally lose the needles that are six or more years old. These will fall from the very inner of the tree. Note when walking through an evergreen woodland that when you look up from under a forest sized conifer there aren’t any needles near to the trunk they are all on the outer edges.
  • Place your Bio Plastic Skirt/Superbin bag in place.
  • It’s easier to fit your stand with your tree layed on it’s side. 
  • Fill the stand with water. Top it up daily.
  • Decorate.

Potted Christmas Trees

This is a bit of a nightmare.

There are:

Trees lifted out of a field and potted for sale for you.

Trees grown in pots that are then planted in a field to grow.

Tree container grown above ground in pots all their lives.

Trees lifted from the ground & potted will have had their roots severed trimmed (or hacked with a spade). This means all feeding roots are removed. These are the ones that absorb water from the soil. Without them water uptake is limited. They may or may not live after Christmas if planted in the garden.

Trees grown in pots then planted in the ground have the same problem. Roots will naturally grow through the drainage holes in the pots into the field soil. These are removed after lifting from the field. These are the feeding roots again. Life expectancy after Christmas – 50:50!

Trees grown in a pot all their lives are most likely to live after Christmas. These trees are always a lot more expensive as you are basically buying a properly grown garden plant. There is a problem when planting in the garden after Christmas if these trees have been indoors in central heating over the Christmas period. These trees need watering daily too. If not the tree may have dried out, died inside and as with most evergreens, they won’t show this until March or April. 

Read our separate post about Potted Christmas Trees for more detail. 

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