UKC

My mother kept asking me if I was getting a Christmas tree .  I've never had my own since getting my own house and I was in two minds about doing so .  

I live alone and apart from seeing maybe my mum at few times over the Christmas break and perhaps a close friend I'm not expecting any visitors.  As such I was not motivated to bother doing so.  

Anyway I saw some  living trees for sale pretty cheap and so bit the bullet and got one.  

I think my mother was pleased and she and her sister came over to help decorate it yesterday.  It was nice to do that and using some of the decorations from my childhood brought back memories.  

Anyway.  Why do people bother with cutting down poor trees and not go for living trees instead ? There should be some sort of collection service for unwanted trees and maybe a small cashback scheme perhaps to encourage this for people that don't want to keep them for next year.

Mine is only 2/3 foot high and I plan to just pot it on and have it in the garden ready for next year.  All being well I'll just dust it off and maybe shake any spiders and insects out of it before moving it in the house for a few weeks.

The idea of cutting down poor trees for a short seasonal holiday just seems so utterly wastfull. 

I think its a good idea personally if the logistics of it could be sorted.  Is there anything like this in effect already ?

Just a thought really . 

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

Parents used to buy live trees but very often after a month in a centrally heated room they died anyway. On the rare occasion that they survived Christmas it usually took a couple of years for them to recover enough to be brought back into the house. Then where to you store several generations of tree in the summer? 

Remember one epic year when the Christmas tree was to big to fit in the car so was carried back from the allotment (a good half hour walk or more, all uphill). Got it home and had to cut the roots and about a foot of the base before it would fit in the house, and the poor fairy was banging her head on the ceiling. 

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

Living trees are a pain in the arse, they usual suffer from significant die off as a result of the roots being knackered and you eventually dig them up and chuck them anyway.  If you're unlucky the tree will survive well enough to be "acceptable" and you'll be stuck with a crap pine tree in your garden all year.

 

I'm not sure what the environmental impact of Christmas trees is but it is probably fractional compared with the rest of the consumer glutchh and all that plastic crap that is given and thrown away.

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

We brought home a live tree from my Mrs' business she had at time and planted it in the front yard.
It was only about 4ft high at the time.  It's now taller than the house.  Fabulous tree!

In reply to Jenny C:

I'm thinking of keeping mine in a pot slightly bigger  than I brought it in so as to not let it get to large .  

I don't really know if it's viable so I suppose it's an experiment really.  

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

I go and cut a tree down and at the end of Christmas I mulch it. Carbon neutral apart from the transport. Possibly carbon negative as Co2 taken out of the air and returned to the ground.

Not really a big deal is it?

 

 

 

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

If they’re grown locally and transported by hand it’s great.  Fast growing spruce locks plenty of carbon away in its roots so you make a business out of growing young trees on crap land that’s carbon negative - given proper disposal.  

(Speaking as the owner of a fair few accidental Sitka saplings; they take no looking after, no chemicals, are self renewing and make a haven for moss, birds and insects when young and letting light and air through to the ground.)

 

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

we do - we have a selection of small trees one of which is chosen to come in for Christmas, grown from seeds, from the woods near Loch Morlich and other places.  And a couple of pines grown from cones on the last tree that was killed near Whinfell for Christmas by the woodman, something I vowed we'd never repeat.

Today I took the top off a huge pine which came down in the last storm in woods where I run.  Looks great in the living room now. I've seen people make a large windfall bought look fantastic but I've not got the artistic vision to pick the right one. 

Cheers Ross. 

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

We get about 3 Christmases from a potted tree before we plant it in some scrub land and get a new one next year. 

First Christmas it stays in the pot you bought it in. Re-pot in spring.

Don't bring it inside too early and do it gradually. Ours is currently in the lean-to, probably into a cold bit of the house next week for a few days before bringing it into the living room. Same in reverse in the new year. Then it lives in a pot in the garden for the rest of the year.

Some areas apparently have rental potted trees, so you don't need to worry about re-potting and summer storage.

In reply to gravy:

Apparently the biggest environmental impact of cut Christmas trees is the disposal. They release methane when they decompose. Apparently they should be burnt or munched.

In reply to girlymonkey: They burn really nicely in a garden incinerator. Longshaw Lodge in the Peak posted on facebook about the money from the trees they sell helping to fund useful and worthwhile things in the following year. 

I like to use my tree and other people's as a base to burn garden rubbish on. 

In reply to girlymonkey:

With it being straight after christmas, I'm not sure I could face munching my way through a tree.

In reply to Jack:

Lol, silly autocorrect!

Thanks for spotting it!

Mulch your trees, people! Don't munch them!

 

Is it really worth it for a 4 inch tree?

 

In reply to Jenny C:

Make your own punchline up for this one.

In reply to Jack:

You know I ment a 2 to 3 foot high tree.  

There's always one 

 

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

I tried the living tree option once. Brought it in from the garden the following year and went to pub to play darts. Returned home (sober!) to to be met by a "shimmering" tree. Various insects having laid eggs in the tree which hatched in warmth of the house. Anyone else had this excitement?

In reply to Profanitynotsanity:

Great for the environment , maybe not your houses though.

 

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

I wonder what the difference in environmental impact is between buying a cut tree every year to keeping a plastic one for 10.

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

Especially as 2/3 of a foot would be 8 inches, no?

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

Lots of info online about the merits of real and artificial. One here -

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-38129835

 

Dave

In reply to Tringa:

He said a 2m artificial tree has a carbon footprint equivalent to 40kg of greenhouse gas emissions, which is more than twice that of a real tree that ends its life in landfill - and more than 10 times that of real trees that are burnt.

"So if you have an artificial tree at home you would need to reuse it for at least 10 Christmases to keep its environmental impact lower than that of a real tree," he said.

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

We've got a large indoor Yucca....we decorate that....seems to do the trick even if it does not look "traditional"

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

We've had a small one which lives in a pot on the patio the rest of the year. It doesn't seem to exactly like being indoors in the warm but isn't too bad if we don't bring it in too early and keep it away from the radiator.

The main disadvantage is it does limit you to a fairly small tree.

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

Feel quite happy that our artificial tree is doing its bit for the environment; it is well over 10 years old.

 

Dave

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

some areas reuse christmas trees as tidal barriers and to help reduce flooding, otherwise yeah just mulch.

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

The problem with as potted tree is the pot - we have a little one in a pot about 60cm diameter, it weighs a bloody ton!

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

After years of using real trees and then burning the dried out remnants up the garden I decided it would be safer to keep a gallon of petrol in my front room.

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

Ours is cut down by us locally we then burn it with the rest of the Christmas rubbish.

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

We bough a real tree from somewhere nearby last year and then discovered this place Locavore nearby had the very service you mention. They were also happy to replant our tree in Jan even though it wasn't bought from them. Nice folks! 

https://christmas.glasgowlocavore.org/#christmas-trees

 

In reply to kolkrabe:

That's brilliant.  Great minds eh ?

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

We got a bit fed up with forking out a large sum of money for a disposable tree each year, so 5 years ago we tried a different approach.  We went to local woodlands and found a collection of fairly full twiggy windfall branches (dunno what flavour of tree), painted them with white emulsion then scatter sprayed them with purple glitter paint, bundled them together and the Christmas twig was born.

It stands around 6ft high, is stored in the cellar and comes out every Christmas.  Cheap and reusable, and somehow even looks presentable.