Christmas tree cultivation is an agricultural, forestry, and horticultural occupation which involves growing pine, spruce, and fir trees specifically for use as Christmas trees.
The first Christmas tree farm was established in 1901, but most consumers continued to obtain their trees from forests until the 1930s and 1940s. Christmas tree farming was once seen only as a viable alternative for low-quality farmland, but that perception has changed within the agriculture industry. For optimum yield and quality, land should be flat or gently rolling and relatively free of debris and undergrowth.
A wide variety of pine and fir species are grown as Christmas trees, although a handful of varieties stand out in popularity. In the United States, Douglas-fir, Scots Pine and Fraser Fir all sell well. Nordmann Fir and Norway Spruce sell well in the United Kingdom, the latter being popular throughout Europe. Like all conifers, Christmas trees are vulnerable to a range of pests.
The final stage of cultivation, harvesting, is carried out in a number of ways; one of the more popular methods is the pick-your-own tree farm, where customers are allowed to roam the farm, select their tree, and cut it down themselves. Other farmers cultivate potted trees, with balled roots, which can be replanted after Christmas and used again the following year
Read more about Christmas Tree Cultivation: History, Environmental Effect, Industry Classification, Cultural Significance
Famous quotes containing the words christmas tree, christmas, tree and/or cultivation:
“He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires.
I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas trees.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The seventh day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Seven swans a-swimming.”
—Unknown. The Twelve Days of Christmas (l. 34–36)
““Where the tree of knowledge stands, there is always paradise”: thus speak the oldest and the youngest serpents.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The cultivation of one set of faculties tends to the disuse of others. The loss of one faculty sharpens others; the blind are sensitive in touch. Has not the extreme cultivation of the commercial faculty permitted others as essential to national life, to be blighted by disease?”
—J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)