what evergreen will make the best potted Christmas tree?

I'd like to add potted live trees to my market garden offerings in the weeks before Christmas. What variety would do well? I'm thinking of selling them at the 18-24" stage. We grow Christmas trees here, and I have a greenhouse to use - so I have experience with two aspects of this....just not the combination.

thanks,
katie

This message was edited Jan 21, 2007 3:21 PM

I got a couple Dwarf Alberta Spruce as gifts that have lived so far. . . I didn't bring them in the house, though. I like them better than the Norfolk Island Pines you see everywhere in stores, and they have at least a chance of living in this area.

Thanks - I can't purchase Norfolk Pines from our regular source anyway, but they might have the dwarf Alberta.

We have a couple hundred Norway spruce that are holding a nice shape at about 18". Do you think they'd do well in pots? I figure I'd be pruning them differently than the field trees to make them denser.

katie

I don't know much about it. . .There are dwarf Norway Spruce cultivars that do fine in containers. I wonder if the species Picea abies would grow too fast for containers.

Stone Pine (Pinus pinea) seedlings are commonly sold at this size or slightly smaller. At this age (2-3 years old) they have glaucous blue-green needles about 2-3cm long.

Resin

Around here, I've seen all sorts of different kinds sold in pots for the holiday season--I don't think all of them necessarily do well in pots long term so they're designed more to enjoy them for the holidays and then you're supposed to plant them in the ground. So if that's your intention with your plants, then I think anything that has a decent Christmas tree shape when young ought to work. The only one I've ever bought was Pinus halapensis, and it did fine for several years (in a pot) until one summer I left the pot in the hot summer sun with not quite enough water and it got a bit brown and crispy looking!

Stoneycreekiris:

Maybe you've already perused some of the threads on this forum where folks are drooling about conifers that they can't wait to get. If so, you'd be steered towards species like Abies and the rarer members of Picea and Pinus.

Minimally, by growing these on in containers from seedlings you'd be "making up" nice field liners and possibly young trees to sell off to other growers even if you never sold a single one as a Christmas tree.

If you aren't a risk taker, then easily grown species like Thuja plicata will grow in pots, can take shearing when little, and are still different enough to separate from the herds of "normal" holiday offerings.

Let us know what you decide, and send pics of the process.

Wow, you all are geat - I never expected so many responses so quickly!

I'm a risk taker who also covers her butt: I'd try fifty of something iffy and fifty of something safer. I need to approach this as a business venture but after all, the whole point of having such a diverse operation is to be able to take chances on new ideas. You're right that even if I could not sell these at the tabletop-Christmas-tree size (my market garden customers are mostly urban and there are a lot of graduate students with small apartments) I would still be able to sell them later.

I know I'd prefer short needles, and I'd prefer a darker green - just a personal prefence there. I'm thinking if I buy two year old seedlings I could get them to the smallest salable size in two years, based on what our trees do in the field......they'd have less weed competition and less wind to contend with, and I could use net over the lot of them to at least slow down the deer. We've had bagworm problems with our firs and I've seen some of the bags on the cedars in the forests around here, so I'm thinking the Thuja Plicata would be susceptible. I only use organic controls here and I know there are some options for the bagworm, but I just don't want one more spraying chore at a busy time of the year, so I'd like to find a variety that isn't bagworm-food.

katie