Twin H Tree Farms sells about 60 to 70 percent of each year's harvest. (Devan Ridgway)
It’s getting harder to grow Christmas trees due to the rising temperatures and diseases. Warmer weather affects needle retention, dries the soil, and allows more pests to thrive.
The demand for trees skyrocketed during the pandemic, when people stuck at home wanted to get outside more. While experts assure that everyone who wants a real tree will be able to get one, environmental factors are making the growing process a bit more challenging.
Jeanne Hopwood, owner of the Twin H Tree Farms, said because the weather has gotten warmer, she can now only grow two types of trees that can survive the heat: White Pine and Norway Spruce.
“It's clay soil, so it dries out like concrete,” she said. “They're shallow rooted trees, so I have a lot of fatalities as soon as we get a dry spell. If I can get a tree in the field to survive the first four or five years, [I’ll] probably have a sellable tree.”
She’s gone from growing 150 acres of trees to only 50 acres of trees. She plants between 1,200 and 1,400 trees each year, and harvests 300 to 400 each year to sell. It takes an average of 8 to 10 years for a Christmas tree to grow.
“Well, you got 10 years to protect the tree from the elements,” she said. “And if you're lucky, you get a sellable tree. The return on the variety of trees I can plant is not as good.”
A variety of bugs and blights, as well as hungry deer, also make it harder to keep the crop healthy, Hopwood said. She can usually sell about 60 to 70 percent of each year’s harvest.
“I cannot get enough money out of the ones in the field to make a profit off of them,” she said. “I just grow them because people like to walk through them…there's no way I can make profit growing trees anymore, because I am too far south. The ground is not good. There's just too much heat.”
Hopwood said she has raised the prices of the trees in the hopes of making more money; depending on the size and type, prices range from $50 to $375. Even if she doesn’t make much money off of the trees from the field, people still value the experience of cutting down their own tree.
“It’s hard to quit when so many people want to come out and get a tree,” she said.
While Hopwood said she has an adequate number of trees on her farm to get by, she still relies on her supplier from Michigan to get more types of trees to meet demand for taller trees. Michigan is the third largest producer of Christmas trees in the nation, growing nearly 13.5 million fir trees each year. She received 1,500 trees from Michigan. It’s not easy to find another supplier to ship her more varieties.
“There is no place else for me to go,” she said. “The suppliers take care of the customers they've had the longest. So if I try to go someplace else, they're going to take care of their people first. You can't get back in that line. If I give up my line with this company, then I'm going to be lucky to get anything. So I have to take what they'll let me have, and I'm kind of stuck there.”
Every spring, Hopwood sprays a pesticide on the trees to fight White Pine Weevil, an insect that harms pines, Norway spruces and more. For the pesticide to be most effective, she tries to spray the trees on a 50-degree day in spring. While Hopwood managed to spray at the right time this year, it’s hard to time correctly.
“You're supposed to spray on the 40-50, degree days because the Weevil comes up from the ground, you have the time it takes a Weevil to crawl to the top of the tree and lay eggs to spray the tree, which is about 48 hours,” she said. “The trees are much better this year than they have been in the last couple years, because I lose the whole top of the tree when I have to cut the whole top out. So I end up with shrubs more than trees.”
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Other farms in southern Indiana are having similar issues. Gary Jecker of Jecker’s Tree Farm in Harrison County, on the border of Indiana and Kentucky, said he has also had trouble growing a variety of trees due to the trees developing diseases. Droughts also harm new seedlings. Jecker used to grow Scotch Pine, Blue Spruce, Black Hills Spruce and Norway Spruce. Now, he only grows White Pine and Canaan Fir.
“With my last batch of Scotch Pine, once they got to be about two-and-a-half, three, I started losing trees. They just started turning brown, and I had no idea why,” he said. “And they had a disease. I have been growing Scotch pine for years, and no problem, and then, boom, they developed a disease in this area. And the same way with Blue Spruce.”
Unlike Hopwood, Jecker said he doesn’t have enough trees to go around. While he grows 5,000 to 6,000 trees on his farm, he is only able to harvest 275 to 300 each year. He ships in just over 100 Fraser Firs from North Carolina.
“This year we will stop selling choose-and-cut trees, probably about the eighth, ninth of December,” he said.
Nathan Pennington, co-owner of May’s Greenhouse, also ships in trees from North Carolina, about 900 Fraser Firs. Fraser Firs are one of the most popular types of trees in the country.
“The Fraser firs are kind of the Cadillac of the Christmas trees,” he said. “That's what everybody wants.”
Pennington said they haven’t been able to get enough trees that are 9 feet and taller; he wanted four or five more. His tallest tree this year is 12 feet instead of the normal 14 feet. The demand for taller trees is increasing.
“They've been slow to grow, so they've been planting more, but it's just now starting to catch up to demand,” Pennington said. “The taller trees haven't had enough time to grow yet to have enough.”
Bert Cregg, professor of horticulture and forestry at Michigan State University, said younger trees are the most vulnerable to the warmer temperatures. Average annual temperatures have increased one to two degrees in the last 45 years, and are expected to continue to rise another five to six degrees by 2050. Summer growing seasons are also expected to be hotter and drier. Droughts can harm young trees that have small, poorly developed root systems. To address this, farmers can manage weeds to reduce competition for soil moisture, as well as add irrigation and mulch. Droughts also stress trees more, which makes them more vulnerable to pests and diseases.
Higher temperatures, especially in the fall, can decrease trees’ ability to retain their needles due to loss of moisture, Cregg said. Harvesting trees later in the season when it’s colder can increase needle retention. It’s recommended growers harvest their trees in the colder months, or harvest trees that require less cold exposure first, such as Scotch pine, and more sensitive species later, such as Concolor fir. Storing trees in a cool environment after they are harvested also helps needle retention.
But this becomes harder to do because people are starting their Christmas celebrations earlier and earlier each year, Cregg said. May’s Greenhouse got calls from people asking when they would start selling trees as early as Nov. 1.
“I can remember when the day after Thanksgiving was the start of the Christmas season. Well, now it's the day after Halloween,” Cregg said. “People want their Christmas trees earlier and all this stuff. But there's limits to the biology.”
Studies show early celebrations and the sight of holiday décor can improve mood and increase dopamine levels. Jami Warner, executive director of the American Christmas Tree Association, said 95 percent of homes in the country display at least one tree, and almost 80 percent of trees displayed are artificial. Around 85 percent of artificial trees are imported from China.
Read more: Living Christmas trees can be a sustainable alternative to fresh cut and plastic trees
“It’s just a convenience, you know, instant Christmas,” Warner said. “I think that's very popular.”
Even though artificial trees are growing in popularity, Warner said not to worry about real trees going out of business, even with droughts affecting crops in the Northeast and Pacific Northwest.
“I think the popularity of both trees is still extremely high,” she said. “We do see a lot of people decorating inside and outside of their home with multiple trees, which is fun. I mean, you can have a tree in every room.”
As climate change continues to make temperatures rise, Bill Lindberg, Christmas tree extension educator at Michigan State University, said farmers must start growing tree species that are more resistant to warm weather. Canadian Fir and Turkish Fir handle higher temperatures well.
“We're actually establishing seed orchards here in the United States,” he said. “We are going to collect and create our own seed supply in the United States to then grow those tree seedlings so even though they're not native to the U.S., we would still produce some here.”
