Topics for articles can get really scarce this time of year! I was talking with my wife at lunch this week and mentioned that I needed a topic for an article. She said what about Christmas Greens? I said that’s perfect, I can talk about how to pick and maintain collards and kale throughout the cool season. She said, “That’s not what I meant, I was talking about ever-greens, like trees and wreaths! ”All I could say is that I like collards too!
How about the wreaths and Christmas trees? I had a special article that ran at Thanksgiving to talk about the trees but what about the wreaths? Have you ever wondered where all that beautiful greenery comes from?
Extension Master Gardener℠ Volunteers do a fundraiser every year selling Christmas wreaths. The wreaths this year were from a new supplier. They came from a family-owned farm in Alleghany County, just outside the little town of Sparta, NC. They grow roughly 300 acres of Christmas trees for wholesale and market. I had a chance to talk with them when I picked the wreaths up from their farm in November. It just happened to be the first day they had received more than a tenth of an inch of rain since June! She had chickens that were producing eggs already but hadn’t really ever been in the rain yet!
She and her brother talked to me a little more and come to find out, the Christmas trees were suffering from a pretty severe drought at that point. It didn’t hurt the quality of the product though! One of my friends owns Eastern Pines Dental in Greenville and he buys wreaths from us every year. I asked how they were doing and he said they were just as perfect as the day I brought them. Ms. Amy told me that to keep them fresh, it is a good idea to spray them down with water twice a week. Our previous supplier, whom we had bought from since before I came to Extension, wasn’t able to make the wreaths this year due to a lack of growth on the trees resulting from the drought.
