How to Get the Most Out of Your Old Christmas Tree

You paid a lot of money for a fresh Christmas tree just weeks or days ago, so it seems a shame to just toss all that cash in the trash. Plus, many garbage or recycling companies now charge a fee for hauling your tree away.

While that evergreen may not appear so green anymore, there are many ways it can continue to serve a purpose. Here are 10 ideas to help you get the most for your Christmas tree money this year. 

1. Toss it in on the fire: Use a few dry branches as kindling to start your fires. It smells fabulous but burn with caution: Christmas trees are highly flammable and contain a lot of resin, which produces more creosote than hardwood trees.

2. Tree-mendous trellis: Trim the branches and prop the tree up in your garden. It makes an excellent trellis for clematis, purple hyacinths, morning glories or other climbing vines. A tree trellis lasts only one season, but you can't beat the price. Trim the branches off, but leave some for vine support. Sink the trunk in the ground.

3. Let it swim with the fishies: Christmas trees make great habitat for fish. Make sure, however, that you securely anchor it to the side of the pond or lake, so it won't impede water flow and will control erosion.

4. For the birds: Your discarded Christmas tree can serve as a naturalized feeding station for wildlife. Lay the tree on its side in a sheltered corner of your yard and scatter birdseed around it. Or "plant" your old tree in a bucket filled with sand and decorate it with pine cones slathered with peanut butter. Other ways to feed wildlife include smearing suet in the branches or hanging fruit slices from the branches. Leave on any garlands made from popcorn or cranberries as a special holiday treat.

5. Wood-chip mulch: If you have access to a woodchipper, strip the branches and turn the trunk into mulch. Evergreen chips can be used just as you'd use any wood chips, except that they also smell great. Evergreen tree chips are thin so make sure you provide thick enough coverage to protect plants.

6. Pine-needle/bough mulch: Strip the needles to make great mulch for your acid-loving garden plants. They'll look great and at the same time they reduce the amount of water plants will need and the weeding you'll have to do next spring. Alternately, leave the needles on the branches and place boughs on top of low-growing plants for protection during late winter, when freezing and thawing of the soil heaves shallow-rooted perennials out of the ground.

7. Get crafty: Dry evergreen needles for potpourri or a nice-smelling pin cushions. You can also make pine-needle vinegar out of them. 

8. Carve-it-up: Whittle a walking stick as a Christmas present for next year. A lot of bow hunters are going back to the old-world way of hunting, so maybe you know someone who would appreciate a home-crafted longbow.

9. Feed it to an elephant:  ...or a deer, sheep or camel. The unique oils in pine trees actually help some animals' digestion. This is a common practice in Germany, so why not help out deer and sheep in the U.S.?

10. Start with recycled materials: Christmas trees made from green beer and wine bottles or plastic water bottles are appearing all over the world. When you're ready to take down the tree, just pop the empties into the recycle bin.

Photo by cote