Just weeks out from Christmas, if you have not nabbed your real tree yet, how easily you will get one depends on where you live.
Key points:
- Some Christmas tree farms are expecting a poor harvest due to unfavourable growing conditions
- The most widely grown variety, Radiata pines, take about four years to mature
- Demand for real trees has surged since COVID, contributing to depleted stocks in some areas
The popularity of real Christmas trees surged during the pandemic, with many households drawn to the fresh pine scent, environmental benefits and the ritual of walking the farm rows to pick your own.
Far North Queensland grower Juana Adoberg said she had been blown away by consumers’ enthusiasm for a real tree during the pandemic, and demand had not waned despite cost of living pressures.
“Nobody was travelling and everybody was like, ‘Oh, we just want to have a nice Christmas because it’s been such an awful year’ and so everyone wanted to get a real tree,” she said.
“The smell is probably the number one thing — if you’ve ever experienced having a real tree in the house, you cannot beat that smell.”
Real trees come at a higher cost than artificial types, typically starting at more than $100, but Ms Adoberg said that was not deterring consumers.
“I think once people have had a real tree, we find 95 per cent of the time they continue to get a real tree because they have that experience and love it.”
But turbulent and patchy weather conditions in parts of the country have impacted supply, with shoppers warned not to leave their purchases too late because some growers sell out early.
Is it too late to get one?
Radiata (or Monterey) pines — the most widely grown variety used for Christmas trees — take about four years to reach marketable size.
Yields are influenced by conditions in the previous seasons.
For some producers — in South Australia, Queensland’s Granite Belt and Daylesford in regional Victoria — positive growing conditions have led to a healthy supply of trees for the festive season.
But in other areas, unsuitable weather conditions have impacted younger trees which are sensitive to “wet feet” or too much rainfall, causing them to rot in the ground.
North Queensland’s largest Christmas tree grower sold out early this season, having produced less than a third of the usual yield due to “too much” rainfall over the past two years.
Ms Adoberg’s Atherton Christmas Tree Farm usually supplies Cairns, Townsville and Mackay with more than 3,000 trees.
“This is probably our lowest year as far as trees … we would have less than a thousand,” Ms Adoberg said.
She said for the first time in 15 years, the farm did not open for tree-tagging due to low supply.
“We haven’t had a dry period where it’s really dried out much,” she said.
“One year they probably could have coped with, but by the second year it was too much rain basically.”
Run of bad weather
Near the NSW-ACT border, weather events have “caused havoc” on Ziggy Kominek’s Santa’s Shaped Christmas Tree Farm.
Mr Kominek said as a result, only 3,000 trees were ready this year, down from the usual 5,000, which had restricted supply to wholesalers for the first time in two decades.
“We’ve had severe frosts, unusual for the time of planting, and I lost 70 per cent of the ones I planted,” he said.
“The year before I lost 40 per cent through drought and the year before that [it was too wet] and I lost 70 per cent.”
Mr Kominek said the surviving trees had not grown much this year because of a lack of sunshine.
It has been a similar story at Ballarat in regional Victoria, which had its wettest June day in 100 years this winter.
Increased demand leads to overharvesting
Alex Costa blamed excess rain over the past three years for the loss of 80 per cent of seedlings at his Victoria Christmas Tree Farm.
He said this year’s harvest had been “pretty average”.
Mr Costa said many Victorian growers were experiencing a “massive shortage” due to overharvesting in the past few years to meet increased demand from interstate wholesalers.
Meanwhile, farms at Dural and Vineyard in Sydney said despite severe flooding in 2022, yields had mostly bounced back this season.
Fewer trees leaving the farm gate across the country has also impacted retailers’ ability to secure stock, but there’s hope next year will be better.
Stefan Aleksiev from Real Christmas Trees Brisbane said it had been a struggle to secure his usual 4,000 trees.
“I’m dealing with about eight different farms to get enough trees in … because I’m only getting small amounts from each farm,” he said.
“They’re trying to play catch up but I think it’s still one more year to go before things get back to normal because of the time it takes for them to grow.”
