They’re tall, they’re rich in colour, and they’re ready for you to put your presents under.
Christmas tree farms around southern Ontario are reporting great harvests this year, according to Shirley Brennan, executive director of the Canadian Christmas Tree Association and Christmas Tree Farmers of Ontario.
That’s largely due to a year without heat domes, extreme flooding, or early frosts, which have been known to ruin harvests in the past.
“This year for us has been a good growing season,” said Alison McCrindle, who runs Chickadee Christmas Trees in Puslinch with her husband Joe Wareham. “We had really good precipitation in the spring and the summer.”
It’s a nice change from recent years, which she said were “just terrible” with extreme heat and dry weather. Poor conditions can stunt the tree’s growth and even alter the colour.
“For 2022 and 2023, our crop was quite low compared to this year,” she said. “We had about half the Christmas trees that we have this year.”
Chickadee has 10 acres of trees, with about 1,000 trees per acre.
McCrindle and Wareham have been running the farm since the late 90s, when the weather was more predictable. Wareham said summers would rarely, if at all, reach the high temperatures we frequently see these days.
The last few years, opening weekend has been green – even rainy at times.
“Even though we’re having a good season, it’s becoming very unpredictable,” she said. “We’re unsure of what we’re going to see every year.”
As the transition from spring to summer continues to speed up, she said they’re having to plant earlier, and planting itself has become more difficult as temperatures continue to rise.
Michelle Breukelman has been running Evergreen Tree Farm for the last few years, though it's been around for two decades.
Just north of Guelph, Evergreen has around 20,000 trees to choose from.
While Breukelman believes the temperature changes are more cyclical, she agreed the last few years have been dry, impacting tree growth.
In recent years, trees might have only grown a few inches, compared to over 20 this year, she said.
“This was just a great weather year. You had the perfect conditions to grow,” she said. “The product we are able to produce this year was remarkably better.”
It’s not just the trees impacted by the weather, though. McCrindle said ticks are becoming more of a concern as the weather is getting warmer.
“We never used to worry about ticks. We do now,” she said.
“We also worry other pests are going to migrate to our region that could be (problematic) for Christmas trees. That’s certainly something that as an industry we’re trying to prepare for,” she said.
Chickadee is experimenting with planting different trees that can handle a more unpredictable climate, like the Colorado Blue Spruce.
In the meantime, she said they’re keeping their fingers crossed for more good years like this one, “because no matter what we’re getting extreme heat. So if you don’t get the rain to go along with it, then we get into trouble.”
