Christmas Tree Preservative?
I worked at a Christmas tree farm in high school. If you want a non-dry tree, the best bet is to go cut-your-own. It will be young, stay fresh, and not drop needles. A lot of the trees bought on Christmas tree lots are cut up to three weeks before Thanksgiving and trucked from rural areas to more populated ones. It’s an intensely drying process. If you’re buying a cut tree the first week in December, your tree could have been cut a month. Nothing much you do for it will keep it fresh – it’s too late. If you’re lucky and find a tree that was cut only a week or so ago, it may still be ‘drinking’ and transpiring. You can tell by the fact that it’s taking up water. You can tell it’s taking up water by comparing the amount you pour into the reservoir with an equal amount left out in a bowl in the same room – water will evaporate no matter what, so this is the only way to tell the difference between what your tree is drinking in vs. what the air is taking for humidity. If your tree is still
