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Christmas isn’t coming early this year, but you might want to get your tree sooner rather than later.
Rick Van Duyvendyk with Dutch Growers told the Greg Morgan Morning Show that people should try to get their Christmas trees as early as possible this year. He predicted his store will be sold out of trees by Dec. 10.
Van Duyvendyk traced the issue back to a pre-pandemic crop failure caused by a drought.
“The pandemic came, and then everybody put live Christmas trees up because they’re at home,” he said.
“They were stuck at home, so they all decided to put a live Christmas trees up, and so that made even the United States look up to Canada for more, so there were more trees cut.”
A single bad year for tree crops can affect supply for some time, Van Duyvendyk explained.
“You can’t grow a Christmas tree overnight, so we’re probably looking at another two to three more years of reduced numbers at all the tree farms that grow these trees,” he said.
Van Duyvendyk said trees have also become more expensive as a result.
Because of the shortage, Van Duyvendyk says the supplier that Dutch Growers buys from is limiting the amount of trees that go out to each client. He said Dutch Growers was only allowed to purchase the same number of trees it had bought previously, while some smaller operations were cut out altogether.
“They just took their bigger customers that they’ve been dealing with for a long time,” he said. “We’ve been dealing with (them) for over 30 years.”
Van Duyvendyk said he’s planning to get in touch with other garden centres to find out where to get more trees, but there seems to be a shortage across Canada.
He said that means people should get their trees early, even if they don’t put them up right away.
“Put it in the shade, somewhere where it’s not in the sun, whether in the shed or on the north side of a house or the north side of a shed,” he said.
“If you’ve got to put in the garage and your garage is a little bit heated, just stick it in a five-gallon pail of water or something. Then at least you have your tree for later on when you want to put it up.”