This was published 7 years ago
Sales of pine Christmas trees surge in Canberra
By Andrew Brown
For many people, planning for this year's Christmas celebrations can take days, or a couple of weeks at most.
For Christmas tree farmers, however, preparations for Christmas Day, 2016 has been three years in the making.
Ziggy Kominek from Santa's Shaped Christmas Tree Farm said he's already sold 1500 trees.Credit: Rohan Thomson
With just two weeks until the big day, Christmas tree farms around Canberra are reporting a surge in people buying real trees for their living rooms.
Owner of Gundaroo-based Santa's Shaped Christmas Tree Farm Ziggy Kominek said he has already sold 1500 trees, and expects that number to increase.
"This weekend will be our busiest week, we always seem to peak in the middle weekend of December," he said.
At the nearby Christmas Tree Keng farm, Christmas trees for this year have already sold out, with orders already being placed for 2017.
Pine Christmas trees are planted at least three years before they are sold.
However, portions of different year's harvests are placed on sale at the same time due to the different sizes on offer.
While Canberra's wetter than average spring has seen a bumper crop for this year's Christmas trees, it has caused a downside for future harvests.
"The trees grow a lot quicker and they're nice and busy [because of the rain]," Mr Kominek said.
"The downside is I've lost about 1000 trees because they've become waterlogged and every [Christmas tree] seed has germinated."
Mr Kominek said more people are turning away from the more common plastic Christmas trees to the real thing because of nostalgic reasons.
"Most of us as kids remember pine as the smell of Christmas," he said.
It's a sentiment shared by John Pelli, the co-owner of The Christmas Tree Truck which delivers real Christmas trees from farms directly to houses.
"It's definitely the smell and it brings up certain childhood memories. That's the main difference between real and artificial trees," he said.
Mr Pelli has been helping to run the service in the ACT for four years and said the number of people ordering real trees from the truck has skyrocketed during that time.
He said 70 per cent of their trees have already been sold.
"The majority of purchases have already gone through, but a lot of people like to get their trees about a week out from Christmas so they're fresh," he said.
On average, a pine Christmas tree can last up to six weeks in a home.
However, Mr Kominek said there are ways to make sure the Christmas tree looks its best on December 25.
"You just have to keep it in a shady spot and keep the water up during that time," he said.