Author: Bert Cregg

Last Christmas tree post for me this year and, sadly, it’s not a pleasant one.  As reported by that beacon of journalistic integrity, FOX news, right-wing bloggers killed a marketing check-off program that US Christmas tree producers had worked years to enact.

 http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/11/09/merry-christmas-agriculture-department-imposes-christmas-tree-tax/

For those that are not familiar, a check-off program or agriculture marketing order is an assessment that a commodity group levies against itself to raise money for marketing and research.  Common examples of marketing campaigns associated with check-off programs are “Pork – the other white meat”, “Beef – it’s what’s for dinner”, “the incredible edible egg”, and “Got milk?”  In the case of the Christmas tree check-off, growers voted to assess themselves a 15-cent fee for each tree harvested to go into fund to support a marketing campaign and research.  A majority of US growers felt the program was a good idea in order to promote their product against foreign-produced artificial trees.  The USDA gets involved in these programs essentially as a neutral third party to help collect the fees and oversee the operation of the marketing board, which is made up of growers and grower-elected representatives.  If the growers didn’t like how the program was working out, they had the option to kill the check-off after three years.

All sounds pretty reasonable and rational, right?  It did until right-wing blogger David Addington stumbled up the marketing order in the Federal Register and dubbed it “Obama’s Christmas tree tax”.  http://blog.heritage.org/2011/11/08/obama-couldnt-wait-his-new-christmas-tree-tax/   Once ‘Obama’ and ‘tax’ hit the blogosphere you might as well cue up Don Meredith signing ‘Turn out the lights, the party’s over.’  Just in time for the holiday news cycle, media outlets all over the country pounced on the story.

The ironies are to numerous to mention all of them, but here are just a few.  I attended a regional meeting of growers when the check-off was being debated.  Except for the university scientists and extension observers on-hand, the number of people in the room that voted for Obama in the last election was roughly zero.  Moreover, it was the US growers themselves, not Obama or the USDA that pushed for the check-off.  To the best my knowledge, both the President and the USDA have enough on their plates already without sitting around thinking “You know, announcing a tax on Christmas trees right before Christmas would be a good idea”.

While ironies abound, so do disappointments.  The administration, with little to gain except a lot of negative and misinformed press, quickly washed its hands of the proposal.  This means the US producers; many of whom had invested years developing and championing the marketing program to stave off competition from China, are left back at square one.  In fact, after the traction given to the right-wing portrayal of their self-assessment as ‘Obama’s tax’, US growers are now a couple steps behind square one.  And it’s doubtful they’ll be able to get back to the start line any time soon.

My post on Christmas tree safety got blog readers Michael and Thad into the never-ending debate of what’s better for the environment: a real Christmas tree or a fake one.  As is often said: “Where you stand depends on where you sit.”  In the interests of full disclosure I will admit my bias is on the real tree side.  My first job in high school was shearing Christmas trees back when minimum wage was $1.65 /hour (1976).  Also in the interest of full disclosure I work closely with the Christmas tree growers in Michigan and elsewhere and get a small amount of research support from the state grower’s association.  

Michael and Thad’s discussion turned pretty quickly to the bottom-line when it comes to carbon footprint.  Which choice looks better depends on the assumptions you are willing to make.  The critical ones, of course, are how long do you keep a fake tree and how far do you drive to get a real tree.  If you buy one artificial tree and keep it 50 years it replaces 50 real trees.  If you buy a real tree from a tree lot that’s on you way home and don’t make a special tree to get it, the real tree comes out looking good.  The American Christmas Tree Associate (a trade association for artificial trees, NOT a growers’ group) has commissioned a life cycle assessment and claim the carbon footprint question is a wash  http://www.christmastreeassociation.org/Article%20Pages/choosing-an-artificial-or-real-christmas-tree   This is in contrast to some earlier claims they had made the artificial trees were greener – based largely on the distance driven to get a real tree.

One thing to note is that there are other environmental impacts besides carbon emissions to consider.  Artificial trees are typically made from non-biodegradable plastics and most Christmas tree plantations require some pesticide and fertilizer inputs to keep trees looking good.  In many parts of the country Christmas tree plantation can provide habitat for certain types of wildlife, especially birds that use the trees for perches and nesting.  

Hannah and I embark on Tree-hunt 2011…

While everything seems to get boiled down to carbon comparison these days there are certainly more things to consider.  For those that buy a tree at a local ‘choose and cut’ farm, there is certainly the satisfaction that at least some of your holiday purchases are supporting the local economy.  At the end of the day, however, the debate between real vs. fake for most people gets down to one of two factors: tradition and convenience.  Even though my heart is on the real tree side, I can’t deny that pulling an artificial tree out of a box from the attic each year is easier than going out on a cold wet, December day and getting a tree from a farm and then bringing it home and setting it up.  But my mom was German and we always had a real tree in the house when I grew up.  Now that I have my own family, my daughter and I have a tradition of going out to a local Choose and cut tree farm and looking for the perfect Fraser fir.  No artificial tree can ever replace that. 

Fraser firs at Daisy Hill farm.  Still got a couple years to go, but eventually I’ll be cutting my own.

(with apologies to Blue Oyster Cult)

‘Tis the season for all things Christmas, including the annual hysterical reports of the dangers of real Christmas trees.  Along with heartwarming reports of Thanksgiving feasts at the local homeless shelter and live remotes of frenzied Black Friday shoppers, footage of Christmas trees going up in flames seems to be a staple of every network affiliate in the country.  In fact, in some cases the intrepid reporter will go to great lengths to insure that the Tannenbaum ignites the obligatory conflagration http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9dNS5WPncU

What the talking head doesn’t want to tell you is that a fresh, well-maintained Christmas tree is very difficult to ignite.  Numerous fire agencies and others have documented that a fresh tree that is kept watered will self-extinguish even if exposed to direct flame.  And faulty wiring is even less likely to ignite a fresh tree.  The story changes completely, however, if trees are allowed to dry.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNjO3wZDVlA

Of course, dry trees drop needles as well. So the key to keeping your Christmas safe (and tidy) is to get a fresh tree and keep it watered.  For many trees this means checking and re-filling the water daily, especially during the first week when the tree is brought in the home.  It’s not a real Christmas without a real tree – make sure it’s a safe one as well.  

So far a mild fall has lingered here in mid-Michigan.  With temps in the mid-50’s I was able make much more headway on my fall clean-up than usual.  Typically we get enough early snows or cold-damp November gales that I don’t get to the last of the leaves and frosted hostas until spring.  Leaves are especially challenging here at Daisy Hill farm.  We have about dozen hardwood trees, mainly oaks and hickories, that drop a sizable load of leaves each fall.  For the leaves that fall in the lawn I follow Jeff’s practice and work them into the grass with the mower.  But that still leaves the leaves in the beds and every other nook and cranny they can find their way into.  Then it’s time to pull out the rake and my Craftsman 7.5 hp chipper/shredder; aka ‘My best friend’ (cue Harry Nilsson singing the ‘Courtship of Eddie’s Father’ theme).  I bought the shedder 8 year’s ago and it’s worked like a champ.  The manufacturer claims a 16:1 volume reduction and I’d say that’s a reasonable estimate.  My usual M.O. is to rake leaves, dead perennials, even small twigs into a series of piles and then work my way around the yard.  The main things to avoid are rocks (of course) and plants with long fibrous stems such as tomatoes, which can wrap around the impeller.  In a bit of serendipity, the original bag that came with unit finally wore to tatters so I ordered a new one from Sears on-line.  The new bag actually goes to a newer model and is almost three times the size of the original.  Having to continually empty the bag had been my biggest complaint about the system, so I’m in leaf shredding heaven now.  Since the oak leaves predominate I use the shredded leaves as mulch, putting down about a 1” layer each fall on tree and shrub beds.  It has a nice, natural appearance.  Plus it’s about 1% nitrogen.  Not a huge number, but a good way to recycle what nature have given us.  And certainly better than burning (or attempting to burn) leaves, which is still the most popular disposal method in rural Michigan.

“Stealing an idea from one source is plagiarism; stealing from many sources is research.”  This quote has been attributed to so many people I won’t bother trying to list them here.  But the point is a lot of what we do as professors is spend our time digging into the literature to look for substantiating or conflicting evidence for the ideas were interested in testing.  As a grad student back in the 1980’s, a time-honored tradition was to spend the afternoon at the library combing the stacks for journal articles, loading volume after volume onto a cart and then schlepping off the library copy center.  With the mechanical hum in the background and green glare of the scanner radiating off the walls, we’d wear our toner smudges like a badge of honor as the copy machine counte kept track of our progress.

Today, of course, things have changed dramatically.  The hardcopy CAB abstracts have been replaced by Google Scholar and Web of Science.  For those of us at major universities, hundreds of journals are available at our fingertips through on-line subscriptions through our libraries.  And an electronic interlibrary loan request can usually produce a .pdf of even the most obscure reference with a couple of days.  Unfortunately for those of us working in landscape horticulture some of the hardest to find journals were the ones that we often wanted most.  For example, journals from the American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS) were only available to members and just recently became open access and indexed through Web of Science and other indexes.  Fortunately the situation is improving for two other sources that contain the type of applied research we are often after.  Arboriculture and Urban Forestry (formerly Journal of Arboriculture) and Journal of Environmental Horticulture are both available on-line (or partly available on-line).  More importantly for GP blog readers, neither requires a subscription or university log-in.  

Arboriculture and Urban Forestry is available at http://auf.isa-arbor.com/ 

Journal of Environmental Horticulture is available at http://www.hriresearch.org/index.cfm?page=Content&categoryID=174

Both journals include a search function to make it easier to find related articles.

As an Extension Specialist working with nursery and landscape issues, I’m frequently called upon to troubleshoot problems with trees and shrubs in various settings.  Sometimes it’s residential or commercial landscapes, sometimes nurseries, sometimes Christmas trees.  So naturally I was intrigued when the most recent issue of American Nurseryman featured a cover story on diagnosing nutrient deficiencies in plants.  The article was written by Dr. Gary Gao, Extension specialist with Ohio State University.  The article http://www.amerinursery.com/article-7428.aspx is good and does a good job on covering the basics.  However, the introduction of the article also hit on one of my pet peeves – and what is the Garden Professors for if not to vent on our pet peeves.

The intro states:

"If you have a good understanding of the function of plant essential mineral elements and a familiarity with common symptoms, common mineral nutrient disorders can be diagnosed quite easily."

Maybe I’m just trying to justify my own existence, but I find diagnosing nutrient disorders anything but easy.  This article and countless extension bulletins and factsheets imply that you can diagnose nutrient problems simply by matching leaves from your tree or shrub to a photograph showing the same symptoms.  To which I have three words: Ain’t gonna happen.  For the upper Midwest, I can think of exactly two landscape nutrition problems that I would be comfortable diagnosing by visual symptoms; iron chlorosis in pin oak and manganese deficiency in red maple.  Beyond those two I would want information from foliar samples and soil tests, as well as some site information before concluding the cause of a plant problem.

The main issue, of course, is that plant problems rarely come gift-wrapped.  Nutrient deficiencies (or, rarely, toxicities) are often confounded with other site issues; poor drainage, excessive drainage, too much sun, too much shade, insect damage, diseases, salt exposure.  As I’ve said many times, it’s much rarer to find a ‘smoking gun’ than not.  Usually it’s process of elimination with a best case scenario where you can compare symptom and foliar analyses of  ‘good’ and ‘bad’ plants.  But I think we do a disservice to landscape and nursery professionals and homeowners to imply that identifying the cause of a problem is as simple as picking the right suspect out of a line-up. 

OK, the results are in for our reader poll to design a landscape tree transplant study here at MSU next spring.  And the winner is…er, I mean, winners are: Root ball manipulation and Fertilization at the time of planting.  Root ball manipulation drew 74.3% of the responses, Fertilization was chosen by 63% (voters could chose more than one favorite topic).  All other proposed topics were under 40% (Mycorrhizae – 37%, Crown reduction- 31%, Cambistat – 11.4%, Bioplex – 11.4%).  I will put pencil to paper and survey the trees and space available for a trial.  My initial thought is that we can do a 3 x 2 factorial experiment with 3 types of root-ball manipulation and 2 levels of fertilization.  Root-ball manipulations will include two popular recommendations: 1 – ‘shaving’ the root-ball to remove circling roots; 2 – ‘teasing’ the root-ball to untangle circling roots; and 3 control e.g., planting the root-ball as is.  The two fertilizer treatments will be 1 – 400 grams Osmocote and 2 – control, no fertilization.  The goal is for this to a long-term study – hopefully at least 5-years.  The principal response variables will be survival and growth.  If time and resources allow we will collect water relations data such as water potential and stomatal conductance during the transplant year. 

I was a little surprised that Cambistat did not rate higher.  This product has been heavily marketed to arborists and has been touted to reduced transplant stress.  The active ingredient, paclobutrazol, is a well-known plant growth retardant.  The theory is that it reduces stress by limiting crown expansion and reducing stomatal conductance while roots continue to develop.  I’ve actually been a bit intrigued and may set up a little side study to satisfy my own curiosity.

Thanks to all who took the time to vote.  I look forward to keeping you all posted on the trials!