Statewide Iowa — Thanksgiving is four weeks away, after which many Iowans start decorating for the holidays, but finding the perfect Christmas tree could be a challenge this year with a developing tree shortage. David Pierce, past-president of the Iowa Christmas Tree Association, says some tree farms may be having trouble this season due to the long-running drought.
Pierce runs Honey Creek Timbers in southeast Iowa, near Morning Sun, and has a few thousand white pines and Scotch pines on his acreage. Last year’s derecho destroyed untold thousands of native hardwoods and shade trees statewide, but the powerful wind storm didn’t cause much trouble for evergreens. The heat and the dry weather, though, that can be a problem.
Many clients seek out the Fraser firs and Pierce says he’ll truck them in from out of state, if they can’t be sourced nearby. Perhaps a worse threat to the industry than drought is the march of time, as growers with decades of experience in the business are retiring.
It can take seven to eight years, he says, to grow an eight-foot-tall pine tree from a sapling. The association says eight types of Christmas trees grow well in Iowa: Scotch pine, white pine, Fraser fir, blue spruce, Douglas fir, concolor fir, balsam fir and Canaan fir. To find a grower near you, visit https://www.iowachristmastrees.com and click the “Find a Farm” button.
