Jerry Moody, Extension Director at the Avery County Cooperative Extension Center, regularly blogs on current news and new exciting advancements in the world of Christmas Tree growing. The Avery County Extension Center is a partner of the North Carolina Cooperative Extension who works with communities to deliver education and technology that enrich the lives, land and economy of North Carolinians.
Step 1 Location, Location and Location. This is so important even 50 or a 100 yards can make all the difference. The ultimate location is a highly, highly visible lot with great parking in an area where everyone comes to shop and eat. We had a great lot where our trees were 15 feet from a four lane road which had a traffic count of over 60,000 cars a day. We were in an out parcel of a large shopping center with Outback, McDonald’s, Burger King, I-Hop, Arby’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken. This is where the 60,000 people in a 5 mile square area came to do commerce. This was a place where people got their families together to eat and shop. This is perfect because you need to be in an area where families can conveniently bring their whole family to pick a Fraser Fir Christmas Tree. You do not want to be in a magnet mall where people drive 10 plus miles because it will be hard for a mom and dad to get their family together to pick out a tree.
Step 2 Flow. Where will people park? Where will you prepare the trees to be loaded on their cars? Where wll you store trees? Where will trees be paid for? Where will workers wait for customers?
Place the trees where you get free advertising. Put the parking where it is safe and convient to load trees. It is nice to have the parking within 50 feet or less. Your workers will love your foresight.
Step 3 Build your storage area for trees. You should allow 1.5 sq. feet per tree. We like building a corral out of 4×4’s for the upright posts and 2×6x10’s for the backboards that run from post to post. We look at the travel path of the sun and place the back of the corral to south and the opening of the corral to the north. This shades the trees from the sun which can easily burn a tree that is still tightly wrapped in string.
Step 4 Place sales office between trees and parking
Step 5Place trees on the lot. You can use 3/4 inch re-bar pounded into the ground with 2-3 feet in the ground and 3 feet left above the ground. The tree is slipped over the re-bar and can simply be tied on with string.
Other ways to display trees are to drill the trees and then use steel racks with pins on each corner that are 5″ high. This is more expensive in up front costs but it allows you to sell stands with the same 5″ pins and you can recoup your cost over time.
Trees should be set up in clusters of four . So the customer can walk around and look at each tree and then you should have pathways going by these trees both vertically and horizontally. You do not want the trees too space out or too crowded.
Step 6 “LIGHTING”- Lights are a necessity for advertising and so a customer can see to buy and night and feel safe doing it. Light the lot, the area where you prepare the trees with a free cut and baling and where you load trees onto the car. The light does not have to be bright spot lights but you can use construction work lights with cages that come in a 100 foot rolls these can be bought at most any electrical supply house. You do want to use cheap spot lights from Lowe’s to light your sign.
Be sure your electrical service s completely equipped with no ground fault receptacles and make sure you have enough electricity. You can use a temporary pole if there is no electrical service or you can use a generator. The temporary pole is nicer because the generator makes a lot of noise and you have to keep filling it up with gasoline.
Step 7 Have signs made that have large letter and have a short message.
Step 8 Buy all the stands, shade cloth(we suggest lightweight winter protection material), wreaths(make display boards), tree baler, twine for tying trees on car. We recommend buying price tags and pricing each tree individually .
Step 9 Do not forget getting a business permit and making sure that the area you choose is zoned for selling trees. Leases for good vacant commercial properties usually can be obtained for one or two thousand dollars per month but can run as high as $7000. A tree lot can be put on a green space but beware of low lying areas which will become a muddy mess with rain and a lot of foot traffic. Parking lots are great but you will have to use a rack system or a more primitive leaning system to display trees. Light poles often by code must raise lighting 12 feet above the ground and can be built into your display racks.
Step 10 Do not for get to put your storage area where a tractor trailer can easily access it for unloading.
Step 11 Entertainment: Christmas music, hot chocolate, fire pit(make sure it is enclosed and safe), pony rides, raindeer(you can rent them see the web), Santa, taking pictures and posting them on the web are all things that you can do to make this a fun experience for the family. Let the kids run through the trees they love it but make sure that it is safe with no holes, pins that are uncovered(use 5 foot sections of pvc pipe to cover pins).
Step 12 Partner up with civic groups, churches and non profits. Give them $5-10 for every tree they sell. Get them to advertise in their newsletters. You can partner up with more than one at a time. Get them to vounteer one Saturday or Sunday a piece to help with labor. Be careful of how much money you spend on labor this can drain your profits.
Good luck, have fun and call us if you have any questions. Paul cell 828 387 6139
Box Stores have certainly shaken up the Fraser Fir Christmas Tree Market. Their trees are generally middle to high end #2 grades or field run, low prices, poor displays, clearly marked prices and convenient. But no experience for the family, no running through the trees, no music, no hot chocolate, no Santa, no one making wreaths, drilling trees and you do not see the same cheerful lot workers year in and year out. Bottom line box store are extremely weak on fun and family experience and retailing top quality trees.
If you are going to compete with Box stores selling Christmas trees you have to be strong where the box stores are weak. First, buy top quality trees that are drop dead gorgeous. I have a friend that sells 1200 Fraser Fir Christmas Trees within a hundred yards of a Lowes Store. His trees retail for $20 more on average. There is a real advantage in being this close, customers can easily compare and see the quality difference and obvious 1200 families are willing to pay almost 50% more for a top quality tree.
If you are not this close to a box store then at least have some good quality number 2’s on the lot that you can match Lowes price with. Often if customers know that they can buy the same thing at your lot as they can at Lowes at the same price then they will start looking at and buy the better trees.
Make sure you do a fantastic job of displaying these trees. We like stand straight stands because you can display with these stands, keep the trees in water and sell the stand and put up a new one. They are cheap $8.00 wholesale and the customer can put up their tree in 30 seconds and they will keep coming back to you year after year because they love your Fraser Fir Christmas Trees and you’re Stand Straight Stands.
Capitalize on a box stores second weakness. Experience. Do the decorations and lights. If you have room build a maze, have a nativity scene, petting zoo (rent a reindeer, they are available), do a light show, have a movie night, do the food, have the fire pit. Use your imagination. As mentioned elsewhere some of the best Christmas tree retailers have drive through or walk through Christmas light shows.
A box stores big strength is low prices. Take that away with number twos that you sell at an equal or lower price. The majority of your customers will buy the great trees but have a tree for everyone. Then you can even beat their price by having a few number 3’s on hand.
Then finally advertise and coop like crazy. Get your website, consider Google ad words if appropriate for your area, hand out fliers, get the boy scouts, girl scouts civitans to use your trees as a fund raiser. They don’t run the lot or buy the trees but for every tree they sell they get $5-10. Each club will bring its members, families and friends to your lot to buy trees and wreaths.
If you do all these things over time you will built a great Fraser Fir Christmas Tree retailing business and though you will never sell as many trees as a box store with all its advertising and customer base. You will have a great business.
Shearing a Christmas Trees is a necessary and vital part of growing. Without shearing you would have a tree that was twice as tall, gaps everywhere, and no traditional shape. In short, no self-respecting American would be caught dead displaying one of these things in their home. The goal is to shape the tree in to a triangular shape with beautiful foliage and lots of limbs to hang ornaments on. Shearing really has two goals, to shorten the top from the 2-3 feet the Fraser normally will grow down to 8-12 inches and then shearing the sides of the trees so that there is a beautiful plane of greenery that emphasizes the tradition upside down v shape of a Christmas tree. This shearing produces thick beautiful foliage in a compact package that is a prized thing of beauty.
The process starts when the tree is 2-3 feet tall and from that point on the tree is sheared every year until it is harvested which can be anywhere from 5-15 years. The shearing can not be done by anyone and must be learned. Too much shearing and you cut off all the buds and the tree will not grow the thick foliage. Too little shearing and the thick beautiful faces of the perfect Christmas tree are never achieved.
Our highly skilled workers that have sheared tens of thousands of trees use a pair of clippers in their left hand and a razor sharp 16″ bladed knife in their right hand. They shear the sides with the knife and isolate a single top and cut out competing tops and the job is done. A good shearer can shape and create 400 medium size trees a day. This is hard but very satisfying work because you are creating an artistic masterpiece that will some day be the focus of a very special family holiday.
Below is our field manager, Phil Hobart, demonstrating proper shearing technique…isn’t he talented?
“We paid for a premium tree and got it! We appreciate your quality and service. You’re a pleasure to work with.” - Nancy
“Kills Canada in Quality!”
“Beautiful trees….Sold all of them.” - Judy
“Easy Sell…Great trees EVERY year!”
“Very, Very, Very Nice! No Complaints” - Todd
“Service is most professional in the industry!” - David
“Everyone in our area says we have the best trees!”
“Great trees and service. I appreciate your company!” - Phil
“Extremely pleased! Everyone was happy.” - Michael
UNITED STATES ARMY - Fort Drum, NY“…your website is awesome. For an organization looking to get into this for the first time, your site provides outstanding information.” - Major Barry Stewart, United States Army
Fraser Fir Christmas trees were hurt by frost this May. Fortunately the damage was not everywhere; in fact, it was spotty. Most trees will recover but some of the smaller trees may be set back several years because the damage was more extensive, in that a larger portion of the tree was damaged. Fortunately this was not anywhere near the magnitude of damage that almost all growers in western North Carolina experienced in 2002.
Cool Springs Nursery was fortunately in an area where we experienced no damage. We are looking forward to a great 2009 season of Christmas trees.
Cool Springs Nursery first began planting trees in 1981. We have learned a lot over the last twenty-some years and we love helping people grow and sell quality Fraser Fir Christmas trees. We have had experience with a retail tree lot for many years but don’t currently run one. We sell trees wholesale and have a Choose and Cut retail business now. We sell to nursery centers and other retailers as well as to various organizations for fundraisers.
Ask any question here and we will answer it or refer you to someone we think can better answer your question(s).
We just counted the number of cones on a single ten- foot Fraser Fir Christmas tree. How many do you think there were on one tree?
We counted 450 cones and I kid you not! In this one particular field of 2000 8′-12′ trees, it took 15 workers 3 days to pick the cones off the trees. This is a yearly chore that the older, bigger trees present us with each and every spring. This spring the crop of cones was huge.
There has been a lot of speculation as to what stimulates cone production in Fraser Fir. I have read that the trees alternate years between light and heavy crops. Environmental conditions, drought, bad soil, bad nutrition also seem to stimulate cone production. The tree gets the message that it might not survive so it better do everything it can to reproduce. I do not know exactly what the psychology of the trees was this year or what the cone production says about their mental state. Maybe they felt the economic crisis, recession and the pending disaster coming and they responded in kind but it has been a lot of work cleaning up their panic. We did have a harder winter than in recent years, with more snow and colder weather. That is predicted again for this winter, so we can check that theory out next spring.
One of the cone questions we ask every year at this time is, “How did the cones on Roan Mountain do? Are there a lot of cones? Did the cones get frozen out by a late freeze?” This year we had several nights in mid - May where the temperature got down to 27 degrees at my home, which is at 3600’ elevation. The temperature could easily have been 10 degrees lower in the Fraser Fir stands and groves on top of Roan Mountain, at 6,000’ in elevation. But then, because of the elevation there, the trees are delayed in their growth and are not at a vulnerable stage of growth. Bottom line is that I do not know how the cones on Roan Mountain fared this past winter, but there is a good possibility that there will be a huge crop of seed that will be ripe to pick come September 1.
In the meantime, if you are growing Fraser Fir trees, do not forget to pick your cones. They inhibit the development of Fraser Fir foliage and must be picked if you want to produce a top quality tree.
Virgin forests of Hemlock trees, up to 500 years old, have died. One was in my back yard.In the seventies, I did an Eagle Scout project to maintain the health of another grove in the area, the Hemlock Hill Giants. These stands are very rare on the East Coast because most of these giants were cut in the early nineteen hundreds, from 1900 to 1935. Those trees that survived the cuttings at the turn of the last century were in isolated stands and towered majestically over the other trees around them. They had thrived since 1500 during the era when Columbus found the Americas. Since then, the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution have come and gone and numerous wars, including the Revolutionary and the Civil wars, have been fought in the shadow of these trees.
In my own backyard, over the last ten years, these gentle giants have died and developers have given them their final death blow, putting them out of their misery. Hemlock Hill in Banner Elk has not been developed still sports standing, but dead, gigantic Hemlock trees, five feet plus across from this same era. Although standing, they are all dead or close to it. All this is thanks to the Hemlock woolly adelgid which has been devastating to the Hemlock in the USA. This is a bug that came to United States, first to the Pacific Northwest in the 1920’s from Asia; it traveled east and was introduced to the Northeast in the 1950’s. Closer to western North Carolina, the woolly adelgid was discovered in Pennsylvania in 1967.It is an insect which feeds on the fluid in the hemlocks; its egg sacs look like the tips of cotton swabs, clinging to the underside of the branches of the hemlock trees. It devastates and defoliates the trees. It has spread at a rate of about 20 miles per year. It takes no hostages and kills every hemlock in its path unless the tree is treated and the treatments are hard and usually unsuccessfully applied to these giant trees of the East Coast.
Fraser Fir on the other hand has a brighter future. Large stands of native Fraser Fir exist on Mount Rogers and in the southern North Carolina mountains. Roan Mountain has the largest stand of Fraser Fir trees and is the largest seed source for Fraser in the world. It sits on the North Carolina- Tennessee state line and is bisected by one of the most beautiful sections of the Appalachian Trail, according to National Geographic. These trees are amazingly healthy compared to the Hemlocks even though they too are being attacked by a different Adelgid, the Balsam Woolly Adeglid, which was imported from Europe. There are trees dying here and there; it is hard to tell the exact cause of death but their tops are straight and their foliage is green. The first major sign of damage from Balsam Wooly Adelgid is a crooked top. Also, there are hundreds of thousands of healthy Fraser Fir trees producing cones, which we pick with cherry pickers from the access roads. We used to drag ladders through these groves and climb the trees however, this is now prohibited by the forest service because the trees were being damaged. I have climbed Frasers that were 70 feet high; it is great fun to be in a mature Fraser Fir, whose seedlings we work so intensively with over several years to produce Christmas trees. The bottom line is that Frasers though threatened are surviving; the young trees on the forest floor are numerous and taking the place of any trees that go down. It looks like Frasers will survive the Balsam adelgid, acid rain, ozone and anything else that is out there currently, whereas the Hemlock is going down for the count unless they are sprayed and treated intensively.
I personally mourn the demise of the hemlock; what a great and beautiful tree. It is very sad and ranks in terms of tragedy right in there with the vanishing of the American Chestnut tree in the early years of the 2oth century; the American Chestnut had developed a blight imported from Asia. At some point a disease- resistant chestnut could reach maturity and a generation or two from now could witness this. Foundations are working on making this happen. For the Hemlock, it will take seven or eight human generations before we could appreciate the majesty of a mature hemlock again; we have got a long wait.
