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Comment by Slartie | Hacker News Reader

This is really interesting. There seems to be a significant difference between the US Christmas Tree economy and the one in Germany.

We got our tree for this year a week ago directly from a grower in the local area where we always buy our trees. It is of average size (the 6'-7' size is also what we mostly consider a good size over here) and it only cost us 30€, so our prices here seem to be significantly lower than in the US. Also, I don't know anybody here who has a fake plastic tree - these aren't really a thing here, basically people either don't have a tree at all, or they get a real one.

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The price from a grower (with 20-30% margin) is $30-35 or about the same. It's the fact that retailers (like always) have a 100% markup (50% margin) so if you go to a random convenience store it'll cost double and they'll make the money. No different from most consumer items.

Fake trees last forever... until you throw them away, and then they still last forever.

> Fake trees last forever... until you throw them away, and then they still last forever.

Unfortunately they look like a fake tree forever too. It’s better than no tree at all, but not very inspiring.

You'll never beat the real thing without the smell but if you spend decent money you can buy a convincing looking fake.

Faking the smell is straightforward, but the vaguely creepy feeling of a dying tree in your living room is another story.

Also a fairly real fire hazard, as well as leaving needles everywhere that you'll find until Easter.

We went with a fake tree this year for this reason. I wanted a real one but the excessive amount of needles and the fake one looks real enough. I do miss the smell. Have to find some candles or something...

When we move and no longer have carpet I will go back to a real tree. We will probably have two, the fake one and the real one.. lol.

The next issue will be storing the damn thing...

Growing up, my parents were allergic to most types of the trees sold as christmas trees, so they gave up and bought a fake tree. They spent a decent amount on it (definitely stretched our christmas budget), and it was actually a really great tree that we enjoyed for over a decade. "Not very inspiring" is a bit of a grinchy, scroogey way to think about it... really lacks imagination.

Now I get a real tree, and honestly sometimes I miss the fake one. Keeping the real tree watered and dealing with it shedding needles all the time is a pain. And you'll rarely find the "perfect" tree that doesn't have some odd misshapen-ness or branches missing in key areas. Sure, you can say that's what gives them their charm, but I guess I just got used to having a fairly symmetrical tree.

I also feel a bit bad about feeding an industry that grows a tree only to cut it down so I can stick it in my house for a 6 weeks and then throw it away. This year I learned about companies that will deliver a potted tree and then take it back and keep it alive during the off season. Might give that a try next year.

Is it better for the environment to cart a tree back and forth to your house versus starting the process again with a sapling a tree farm?

I would've thought that buying a tree would be a form of carbon capture: the thing has taken carbon out of the air and brought it back to the ground.

Is there a particular reason you think it's environmentally unfriendly?

This is becoming less true with pre-lit trees. We paid an astounding $700 for a tree and the stupid incandescent bulbs burned out and within a couple years the lights didn't work anymore (replacing bulbs did nothing). I was furious that Pottery Barn did not use LED lights in 2016 on a tree that expensive.

I ended up buying light strands and wiring them myself and I gotta say the final product, while eye bleeding expensive, is amazing. Unlike built in lights mine run all the way through the whole tree, into the middle. There are also a lot more lights now than there were before, and they have different plugs for colored lights verse white, so I can use smart plugs to toggle remotely for example. All in all a great end result, but it was probably $1,300 and 8 hours of labor to get there.

About half of the US doesn't have an economically workable species/breed of tree unless they charge those higher prices. Virgina Pine grows well in the south (was the historical staple crop until 20~25 years ago), but doesn't naturally grow in cone shaped, and requires trimming/shaping and spraying multiple times a year for the 4-8 years it takes to get a marketable tree. Most southern tree farms have replaced V.P. with Leland Cypress (not really a cypress) or a similar/derivative breed of tree with promises of low/no required tending, but they also ended up having pretty high maintenance costs and don't market as well. (They look more like privacy bushes to me, and are also sold for that purpose at nurseries.)

So it ends up being cheaper/more profitable to ship trucks of harvested firs/etc from where they grow almost naturally, and "export" them clear across the country.

Also, the actual/current market for locally grown trees (at least in the south) is sustained 99% by people who still want the experience of choose-and-cut. And that also costs more to run than a commoditized crop.

If I can ask, why do you have so much knowledge of pine industry?

Firsthand experience.

Grandparents had a +/-100 acre xmas tree farm growing up, maybe 20-30 acres of Christmas trees planted at any given time.

It's all planted with timber now.

Now Christmas trees look like the better money maker again.

It's been more than a decade, but in Florida sand pine was usually an indigenous option even at Home Depot. The needles are soft and they are wonderful trees.

Soft is pretty (and beats the hell out of pointy and prickly and sticky), but soft can't hold heavy ornaments- which is a deal breaker to most people.

It's one of the downsides of Lelands and other fast growing breeds, meaning ~3 years to mature instead of 5-6.

Timber has similar issues- fast growth is softer and weaker than old growth.

That said, there are some amazing and beautiful types of xmas trees being bred these days, but when it comes to holiday sentiment, different doesn't always sell.

Which sucks to find out after 6 years of invested time, labor, and cash. (Likely with 5 younger years of crop already planted, growing, and committed to.)

Who is hanging ornaments on the needles?

For most of these types of trees, soft needles usually goes with soft/weak branches. Not sure how universal that is, but seemed to hold for most marketed types.

I remember one type that solved that "problem" and others, but the trade off was it absolutely stunk. But only to some people.

There always seemed to be a major compromise in traits.

Edit: Someone corrected me, I quoted the survey wrong. But here‘s another source (YouGov survey, 2012), saying that 43% had a real tree and 17% an artificial one: https://statistik-dresden.de/archives/5195

> Also, I don't know anybody here who has a fake plastic tree - these aren't really a thing here, basically people either don't have a tree at all, or they get a real one.

Plenty of people in Germany have plastic trees. According to an Emnid survey from 2017, 1/3 preferred an artificial tree: https://presse.vonovia.de/de-de/aktuelles/171220_kuenstliche...

The question has to be translated as "Could you imagine using an artificial tree" or maybe "would you consider using an artificial tree", not "do you prefer an artificial tree".

Thank you for the correction. I trusted a news article without carefully reading the source myself. My bad. I added a different survey.

We got our 1,7m large Christmas tree in Germany for 13 Euros, I simply don't understand how it could have been worth to let it grow for many years at this price.

To be fair, agricultural land is relatively cheap. And you basically just leave the tree there for 10 years, so maybe it works out?

TFA mentions regular trimming/shaping, and fertilizing.

Perhaps grown in e.g. Poland where land and manpower is lower priced, compared to Germany?

Ikea Sweden used to sell similar-priced christmas trees "farmed" in Denmark, but they stopped doing that after accusations that they were undermining local suppliers of non-herbicide-grown christmas trees. (In Sweden christmas trees tend to be expensive in cities and cheap/free in the countryside.)

Ikea has some loss leaders.

Christmas probably isn’t busy for them since there’s not a lot of real estate turnover in December.

I once ran the numbers for their tealights and I couldn’t even buy bulk wax that cheaply.

It's not really labour intensive, you have to offset very little labour and rent of your 10 sqm of land (not suitable for any more profitable crop).

Some subsidies can play a role too.

Yeah, many “Christmas tree” species can grow in highly acidic soil that’s otherwise only good for blueberries, which are tasty, but usually not much else.

At the end of the Christmas season, you can still compost the tree or turn it into wood chips.

One of the key differences is the pruning and shearing during growth.

In the USA it seems more dense trees are preferred [US movie]

But TIL also in Germany some pruning is done, according to "Landwirtschaftskammer Niedersachsen" chamber of agriculture lower saxony [LK]

"Erziehungsmaßnahmen / Schnitt" educational measures / cut

[LK] https://m.lwk-niedersachsen.de/?file=26025

[US movie] https://youtu.be/qElwfYNmy6Q

I’ve lived in NC piedmont area (a couple hours drive from tree farms) since 2004 and basically paid $65-75 for a 6-7 ft tree every year. Every year but one we’ve gotten our tree from whatever corner lot was convenient. (One year we were late and only Home Depot had any trees left.)

There is either a shortage of trees this year or people shopped early. We got our tree earlier today and it was the last of two. They gave it to us for half off ($37 for a 6 ft tree) since it’s a somewhat sad (but fitting for 2020) tree. Once we decorate it it will look fine.

I think more people shopped and more of them shopped early. My neighbor in Massachusetts has a Christmas tree farm and they opened a week early (weekend before Thanksgiving) to try to spread out the crowds. Ha!

It was very busy that first weekend. I actually notmally get a wreath from them but they were mobbed. I was going to go over early the day after Thanksgiving (the day they normally open and the next day they were open) before I went paddling later and it was just a complete mob scene. I'm not actually sure how they dealt with the crush given that they, like me, have a long one lane driveway and cars were backed out to the road. They sold out that day apparently.

Due to the long growing cycles for christmas trees, we're now entering a shortage caused by the 2008 recession, and it's expected to last a few years.

That's mentioned in the article but I thought that mostly played out in 2018 and last year.

The geography doesn't scale up for the US though. I imagine people in Oregon, near the growers, also pay less per tree.

I live in Portland Oregon and paid $40 for a 6’ noble fir yesterday at a small retail lot. Normally, you can bargain down the price (and judging by his tentative price quote, he was expecting me to) but I was happy with that price and didn’t bother.

I tried to barter at a NYC sidewalk tree seller for our office tree once. They wouldn’t budge so I walked.

Had to embarrassingly come back 30 mins later when we couldn’t even find another tree seller. They were nice and didn’t raise the price further.

I think you mean "haggle" rather than "barter". Unless you were offering him supplies from your office instead of cash.

Oregonian here. The prices at Ace Hardware yesterday were $40 for a Doug Fir, and $65 for a Noble Fir. A couple years ago I think I paid $60 for a Doug Fir. But you can also just pay $5 to get a permit from the Forest Service and go cut down your own tree. There are some restrictions (no trees over 12', and there must be other trees within 20' for example) but it's fun to hunt your own tree down--even if the tree that you get isn't a perfectly triangular cone shape like you may get at a tree lot

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