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Tips To Finding A Fresh Christmas Tree: Sniff, Lift And Snap

Tedder
/
Wikimedia
File photo of a Christmas tree farm near Redland, Oregon.

Experts say there are at least three tests to give a Christmas tree before it gets strapped it to a car and dragged home so it doesn’t go “Charlie Brown” before Christmas Day.

How do you make sure you don’t get a needle-dropper tree? Bryan Ostlund of the Pacific Northwest Christmas Tree Association says sniff, lift and “snap test” your evergreen before you handover the greenbacks. 

So what the heck is a snap test?

“A needle on a Christmas tree a Nobel fir, a Douglas fir are kind of like a carrot,” Ostlund explains. “If you go to bend a nice fresh carrot that’s still full of water it snaps readily. If it’s dehydrated it going to be more, it’s going to bend much more easily. It isn’t going to snap right away.”

Ostlund says do the heft test too. When you lift up the tree it should feel heavy for its size, meaning it’s fully hydrated.

Washington and Oregon harvest more fresh Christmas trees than any other region in the U.S.

Anna King calls Richland, Washington home and loves unearthing great stories about people in the Northwest. She reports for the Northwest News Network from a studio at Washington State University, Tri-Cities. She covers the Mid-Columbia region, from nuclear reactors to Mexican rodeos.