If you decide to plant your tree right away, here’s what you’ll need to do:
Select a site with well-drained soil, full sun and that has plenty room horizontally and vertically for the size your tree will become when it’s mature. If the ground is frozen in January, then this must be done ahead of time. The hole should be the same depth as the root ball but two to five times wider.
If your tree root ball is wrapped in burlap: remove the outer layer of synthetic burlap completely, and then remove the natural burlap from just the top of the root ball.
If your tree was in a container, remove container, and then cut and loosen any encircling roots so that the tree isn’t root-bound.
Remove at least the top portion of wire tree baskets after the root ball is in the planting hole. After setting the tree, fill the hole with the loosened, soil you dug out from the hole, backfilling in stages, gently firming each layer of soil returned.
Then water well enough to settle the soil and eliminate air pockets. Apply 2 or 3 inches of mulch on top of the root ball. Do not fertilize until spring because doing so could bring the tree out of dormancy. The idea is to help the tree to continue its winter nap through all of this.
As you can see a living Christmas tree can be a lot of work. If you should decide again one, consider a cut tree. Unlike many artificial trees, a cut (or live) Christmas tree won’t be added to a landfill because a cut tree can be recycled as with other yard debris. Many communities have a pick up day where the city or a community service organization such as the Boy Scouts take the trees to a recycling center. Or the cut tree can be used in the compost pile. Some of the cut Christmas trees come from forest thinning programs done by community service groups who bring the cut trees into town to sell, while others are grown on tree farms specifically for this purpose.
Still there’s something nice about having a live tree for Christmas, one that you can cultivate in your landscape or watch grow at a local school or park. So if this sounds like something you want to do, follow the general guidelines in this two-part article and check with your local experts on specifics for your area.
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