5 Better Ways to Keep Your Holiday Tree From Drying Out

It's All in the Timing!

by Laura Fitzgibbons

1. Add Water to Your Winter Tree Every Day

Adding water to your Christmas tree stand every day is the most important thing to remember. This may seem like overkill, but it only takes one brief period without water for the bottom of the trunk to dry up and close all of the transportation systems to the needles. If you are rushing out the door in the morning and you have to decide between a lot of water or a little, it's okay to just add a little. It's better to add a splash or a cup full of water every day than the wait and do a large amount at the end of the week. If you do forget and the structure of the tree is damaged, it's not too late to manage, but it's much better to just prevent the state of dehydration from occurring in the first place. 

2. Choose a Yule Tree Species that Stays Fresh Longer

There are a countless variety of trees that may be cut and decorated for Christmas and other winter holidays. They most commonly fall into the categories pine, fir, cypress, and spruce. This is a great list showcasing 17 of such varieties. All are what are called evergreen conifers, meaning their needles stay on the branches all year, and they produce pinecones (seeds in a rounded cone). They are also gymnosperms, meaning the pinecones grow bare on the tree as opposed to other types of plants that grow their seeds inside pods or fruit. Generally, types of fir trees stay fresh indoors the longest, with frasier firs topping the bunch.  

3. Mist the Evergreen Tree Needles

While the best path to the needles for water is through the tree trunk, studies have shown that the thick pine needles are also capable of observing water. If your pine, spruce, cypress, or fir tree starts to look a bit dry after a few weeks of displaying yuletide magic, try spritzing it with plain water from a spray bottle or plant mister. You don't need to do this every day, although it can't hurt. Just be sure to watch out for those delicate ornaments or paper decorations!

4. Keep the Christmas Tree Trunk Submerged

Even more important than watering every day is keeping the trunk of the tree submerged. This may mean that on days when you have the time you should fill the stand to the very top to avoid the risk of the tree stand running fully dry. You can check the water levels frequently to get into a good groove of how quickly your tree drinks water. 

5. Maintain the Shortest Possible Path From Earth to the Tree Stand

If you can cut a tree yourself and deliver it quickly to your home, that's a great start. But if not, that's okay--just try to maintain the shortest possible path from the ground to your living room. You can always ask the folks at a farm or lot how long ago a tree was cut down, and make sure they trim the very end of the trunk for you. Get your tree into water as quickly as possible. This might mean filling up your tree stand before you leave for your trip. 

6. Get a Christmas Tree Watering Fountain

Yes, Christmas tree watering fountains are real! You can fashion your own with a small water tank and a syphon straw, or you can purchase one from a store. This can take some of the hassle out of staying on top of watering the tree. 

7. Keep the Yule Tree in its Root Ball and Plant it at the End of the Season

Real Christmas trees with a root ball are harder to come by and more expensive, but they are also much better for the environment. This option also means that at the end of the season, you have a beautiful tree to plant, either in your yard or a local park. You can even go very natural and opt for an outdoor tree, one that you return to every year, and decorate it with natural items like pinecones and strings of berries for the birds. 

How Does Water Move From the Trunk of a Christmas Tree to the Needles?

It's a Plant Cell Highway!

The way water moves through the capillary highway of a trunk has a huge impact on how long your Christmas tree will maintain its freshness and beauty.  The story of how the water travels from root to tree tip is an intricately woven process.

First, the water is absorbed through the roots into the tree's xylem, or the pipeline of cells within the roots and trunk. Each cell is connected to the next, and the absence of water in one pulls in water from the next.  

These tiny shifts of water droplets from one cell to its neighbor and so on are called capillary action. Eventually the water reaches the branches and then the pine needles, providing enough moisture for them to stay healthy and fresh.

Water, Water, Water!

That's really all there is to it--try to provide as much water as the tree would be able to seek out in its natural habitat. Add a little water every day, at least until you are familiar enough with how much gets absorbed that you can maintain a steady schedule. Take the time to observe how much you are adding and how quickly it is disappearing. Add water to the trunk as much as possible, mist the pine needles when you can, and you will have a festive tree throughout your holiday season. 

Are Green, Yellow, and Red Stoplight Peppers the Same Pepper at Three Different Levels of Ripeness?

The Answer is Somewhere in the Middle!

by Laura Fitzgibbons

Bioactive Phytochemicals Create Your Vegetable Rainbow

Peppers absolutely do change color as they ripen. The concept that a pack of red, yellow, and green peppers are the same red pepper at three different stages of ripeness is a fun idea, but it's not actually the case. The real story behind your pack of stoplight peppers is a little more complicated than that. 

When you buy a pack of three different colored peppers at the grocery store, a stoplight pack, they are three different kinds of peppers. So how does coloration and variety work in vegetables? It all boils down to chemicals.

The reddest pepper is sweetest

Something further complicating the question is that the red pepper is generally the sweetest color. This adds to the plausibility that the pepper pack could contain slightly ripening (and sweetening) versions of the same pepper.  An unripe green pepper is the closest taste to bitter. And a super red pepper, with tons of carotenoids, is the sweetest. 

It’s all in the phytochemicals

A plant’s phytochemicals determine how it will taste, smell, look, and even impact your health. The same way that they play a big role in protecting plants from danger, they effectively synthesize into your immune system to support it in fighting off illness. 

The most cartenoids there are in a vegetable, the closer it will be to red. And the more sun available, the higher the concentration of cartenoids. This is also true about temperature: the warmer the temperature, the higher the concentration of carotenoids. 

Carotenoids like lycopene give vegetables their red color

Beta-carotene gives vegetables their orange color

Lutein gives vegetables their yellow color. 

Anthocyanins give vegetables blue and purple color

Red Light, Yellow Light, Green Light

Most bell peppers change color as they ripen with one exception: certain varieties of green bell pepper may stay green throughout their lifecycle. 

Generally the other colors: brown, white, red, orange, yellow, green, and purple, may all start out as green. It may take between two weeks and three months for a full-sized pepper to go from its unripe color to its ripest color. 

Over time the chemicals that make a pepper a certain color increase in concentration, changing the hue and saturation. 

So at the heart of this question, your pack of three red, yellow, and green peppers are not three peppers at varying degrees of ripeness. But they are not DEFINITELY three different kinds either. 

You can virtually guarantee that the yellow pepper is a fully ripe red pepper. And the red pepper is for sure a fully ripe red pepper. However, the green pepper may be any one of the following: an evergreen fully ripe green pepper, an unripe green future-yellow pepper, and unripe green future-red pepper, or an unripe green future less-common-colored pepper (brown, white, orange, or purple). So instead of calling it a stoplight pack, consider calling it two peppers and a mystery!

You're Not Killing Your Orchids: They Have a Natural Season of Looking Super Dead

by Laura Fitzgibbons

Don't feel bad! This is something that happens to so many people. You find a beautiful, blooming orchid at the store, bring it home, and meticulously follow the care instructions. Mist it gently, sprinkle it with the allotted amount of orchid food, maybe lower a single ice cube in each week while singing a soft melody.

And then, inevitably, the beautiful flowers wilt. Soon the sturdy green stems start to look stiff and brown. Next, the tiny leaves and petals fall and you're staring at what looks like a petrified spider of twisting dead branches. 

The plant stays like this for what seems like forever. You try giving it extra water, and that just makes things worse somehow. You move it closer to the sun, into a different window, and nothing. Not a single hint of life. 

What is happening to the orchid is actually a very healthy and important part of the process. You haven't killed it. In fact, as long as you keep up with the same basic care you started with, your orchid will be blooming again in no time, with even bigger, more beautiful flowers.

Why do orchids experience long stages of dormancy?

Orchids lose their flowers as a regular part of their growth cycle. The plants are simply resting, taking a break. Dormancy in orchids takes a long time, but the wait is all worth it. The long periods of rest that the plants go through are part of what make them able to have gorgeous blooms when they start to bounce back. A regular dormancy period for indoor orchids could last 6 months or even close to a year. This long period of dormancy is why you so often hear people say “I can’t take care of orchids–I always end up killing them!” They are Romeo and Juliet plants, sweetly snoozing and feigning death with dangerous plausibility.

How can you prepare your sleeping orchid for its next flowering season?

Believe it or not, the new flowers will not grow from the stems where they grew before. See those spongy, squishy, spiderlike green stems poking out from the bottom of your pot? Those are future flower-wielding branches. 

Most store-bought orchids come with tiny clips. When you see the spongy green stems poking out, simply lift them up onto the plastic stick and clip them into place. By training the new stems to grow upward, they will transform into the woody spikes that flowers grow on. 

Your despair about orchids reminded me of science!

When it looks like not much is happening, way down within the dormant, sleeping brown stick you are able to see, a tiny green meristem is preparing for its greenest season. 

Next come the long branches that will later hold clusters of flowers--these are known as inflorescence branches. Soon the tiny, rubbery flower-serving-trays that hold each flower will pop free, and finally, after exactly the right amount of time has passed, the flowers will unfurl in glorious color.

Go ahead! Grow those beauties and love them whether they are asleep or in flower

Like everything amazing in life, the wait is worth it. When your orchid has returned to its blooming stage, it will be even healthier and happier than before. 

Orchids don’t need extra care compared to other household plants–they actually thrive in colder environments with slightly diffused light. They require very little water. 

They don’t need much–all they really need is for someone to believe in them, to know that even when they look stiff to the touch and dead, all their magic is still forming way down below the surface, and their time to bloom will surely come around again.