Investigating Solutions Other Than Water to Keep Your Tree Healthy

Trimming the bottom of your Christmas tree before you give it some water is vital to keeping it healthy. It opens the pores of the tree and allows the water to seep in. More than anything your tree just needs to be watered right? Or is there anything else? Lots of people have their theories, but do they actually work? 

"We've just used Aspirin, some people just use sugar water but sugar is not good for anyone right?" said shopper Cathy Steward. 

Cathy says the Aspirin helps too.

"It probably has a headache from getting cut down," she said. 

The bigger headache might be keeping it alive if you wait too long to water it. Some people just stick to water. 

"We do. We do not have any secrets," said shopper Scott Faulkner. 

The experts recommends water as well. A cut tree will use about 65 percent of its water in the first week. An average sized tree will need anywhere between a quart and a gallon of water per day. You'll have to add water everyday because if the water table gets below the cut trunk it will dry out pretty quickly. 

"The best method is to give it water. Typical home I'd say at my house, I fill it up with maybe a gallon of water that I got a big vase in, which I recommend and I will have to refill that the next day." said Plant Doctor Jon Bruyn, from Moana Nursery and Landscape Services in Reno. 

Some people use, Miracle Grow, Sprite or 7up but Jon does not recommend it. He says while the salts and sugars might help a little bit it won't work overall. Sugar is not the only thing he disagrees with.

"Bleach has no way that it could work," added Bruyn. 

There are a couple things you can get at your local nursery though. Something you can try is something called Wilt Stop. It's a spray and you want to spray it all over the tree. How it works is before you put it in the water, the tree is not getting any water on the bottom but the top is sweating, so the spray prevents the transpiration or loss of water. You can also try adding a solution called Superthrive to each watering, but the water itself is more important. Unfortunately, once the tree dries out you can't bring it back to life. However, most of the time people can keep their trees going for about three to four weeks if you water it enough.