What to do with your Christmas Tree, after the holidays

1. Check with your city / local recycling center

This happens to be a really easy task for me personally, even though I live in a one bedroom apartment, because Denver is totally prepared to take and use Christmas Trees. They have a Treecycling program where you can place your tree on your curbside or drop it off at one of their two facilities. The Christmas trees will be used to create mulch and compost for Denver's annual Mulch Giveaway and Compost Sale.

2. Check For federal programs

Tell City Ranger District employees prepare to install recycled fish habitat in an Indiana lake. Photo © U.S. Forest Service on USDA Flickr

There are dozens of state and federal programs around the country that collect Christmas trees and use them for habitat improvement and restoration projects.0

For example, the US Forest Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and US Army Corps of Engineers submerge and anchor Christmas trees to the bottom of selected ponds to provide habitat for juvenile fish.

Rather than submerging trees to create underwater habitat, they can also be placed along stream banks to stop erosion and help restore degraded stream banks.

3. Winter Mulch

Check to see if there is a tree recycling events where you can bring your live tree and have it be shred down to natural mulch that you can take home and use in your garden.

If shredding your tree isn’t an option, you can break off the needles, cut the branches into small pieces and use it as much. You could also use limbs to cover your garden beds, protecting them from frost.

DIY Old-Fashioned Popcorn Garland

SUPPLIES

• Popcorn

• Thread

• Needle

• Scissors

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Make your popcorn. You can do this day of or a few days before.

   • Prepping popcorn in advance allows it to get a bit stale so it isn't so brittle when you're stringing it!

2. Thread your needle, I like to double mine up. Be sure to tie a solid knot at the end and leave extra thread on each end for attaching to your tree!

3. Thread a piece and push it all the way to the end, test if your knot is secure. Continue adding popcorn kernels, pushing them down the string once you get a several threaded - it saves time to push several, rather than one-by-one.

4. Continue threading until you have the desired length. Tie another knot at the end.

5. Add these garlands to your tree, or hang on your wall and enjoy!

The Hunt for a Christmas Tree

This weekend, Peter, Piper, and I woke up early, put some hot coffee in our insulated coffee mugs, and hopped into the car, bound for the mountains.

The goal: acquire this years Christmas Tree!

Fir the Forests! 

Here in Colorado, you're allowed to chop down your own Christmas tree! The permit is usually about $10 (ya, it's super cheap!) and you get to have a day outside hiking, enjoying some fresh winter air, in search of your tree!

This is far and away my favorite way to get a tree. They're small and practical, very inexpensive, 100% organic, and you get to go into the mountains instead of some random parking lot where someone's going to try and get $100 out of you.

Some may wonder: isn't it good to not cut down trees in our national forest?

The answer is yes, but you have to remember that federal forests and parks are heavily managed. Forestry work is constantly being done to mitigate fire risk, and Christmas tree chopping actually aids this work! You can only take trees  6 inches or less in diameter, so you're not taking any oldies, and selectively cutting the smaller trees can help limit the amount of forestry work that needs to be done in a location.

The Hike

We found ourselves in Winter Park, CO, buying our permit and heading into a few of the approved chopping areas in the  Arapaho National Forest.

This area is well maintained for Christmas tree cutting. The forest service roads are plowed and there are designated parking lots. Even though the roads were plowed, they were still quite an adventure to travel! When we reached the spot we wanted to head into, there were a few other families around. I realized that lots of people have been doing this for many years. They bring stoves and roast marshmallows and drink hot chocolate.

We put on our jackets and started off into the woods. Our dog, Piper, absolutely adores the snow and was having an amazing time romping around in the forest! We ended up finding a tree that was growing under a large stretch of power lines. This is an area that is going to be cleared one way or another by the power company to maintain the lines properly. We hope our tree would prefer to be a Christmas tree than just chopped down to protect the lines.

Our tree fit perfectly into our small, one bedroom apartment! It's about 8 feet tall, but thinner than traditional Doug Firs and Nobles. It's some sort of pine, though I haven't ID'd it to species. It's about 8 feet tall and probably 3 across at breast height. We're incredibly happy with it, and now our apartment smells amazing!