Farmers say this year’s Christmas tree crop quality is on Santa’s ‘nice list’

Are you hoping for a real Christmas tree this year? For many families, cutting down a Christmas tree is a traditional beginning to the holiday season.
With this year’s wonky weather, you may wonder how the tree crop is shaping up for the season.
Scripps News Grand Rapids visited
in Rockford, Michigan in its 76th year of growing Christmas trees.
Owner Tom Hart grew up on this family tree farm and said this year’s crop is in excellent shape; about the best he can ever remember seeing.
The wet spring followed by near-drought conditions in September and October in Michigan combined to produce fantastic tree quality this year.
Michigan ranks third in the country for Christmas tree production. As with most agricultural crops, timing is everything when it comes to the health of Christmas trees.
“Rainfall in the spring for the new plantings and through the growing season, which is usually we’re done probably about end of July, for the growth of the trees, any new growth, but the roots will still grow continuously,” Hart said.
His family has been growing Christmas trees since the 1940s. Since each tree takes about a decade to mature, new trees are regularly being planted to replace those that are cut each year.
Different weather conditions are essential at certain times of the growing cycle.
Ironically — even though December is “show time” for this crop — too much extreme cold at the wrong time can present the biggest challenge to the trees.
“Sometimes we’ll get some southerly winds when it’s real cold, and we can get some winter damage or winter burn on some Douglas fir and certain varieties,” Hart explained.
And frost at the wrong time in the growing cycle is a big concern.
“Late frost can damage some of the new growth on certain species of trees, and we’ve avoided that for the last few years,” Hart explained.