Having a living Christmas tree is becoming more and more popular every year. Not only can you use your spruce tree as your Christmas tree but also as part of the landscape in your garden long after Christmas. The smell of the living spruce tree brings back memories and makes you feel festive instantly. Around the holiday season, many nurseries and garden centers provide a wide selection of spruce trees in pots that are easy to take care of indoors.
From Outdoors To Indoors
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Let your spruce tree get used to the temperature and moisture difference between indoors and outdoors by letting it acclimate for a couple of days. If you do not do that, your tree can go into shock or start a sudden growth spurt. The best place to keep your spruce tree during the acclimatization period is either in a cool garage or on a covered porch. During this time, check your tree for insects and pests and remove them, so they do not get inside your house. In addition, keep your spruce tree moist by spraying it with products such as Cloud Cover or Wilt-Pruf. After two or three days, move your spruce tree inside.
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When you move your spruce tree back outside, repeat the acclimatization process. If you live in a area where severe winter temperatures are common, you should not move your spruce tree outside. Instead, keep it protected against the low temperatures in a protected outdoor area, such as covered porch or cool garage, for most of the winter or until temperatures rise.
Indoor Care
To avoid the needles of your spruce tree getting burned, place your tree away from direct heat sources such as radiators, heater vents, fireplaces and stoves. It is important, however, for your spruce tree to get as much indirect sunlight as possible. So place it as close to a window as possible.
Put the spruce tree either in a larger container or on a tray to prevent water from overflowing onto your floor when you water your spruce tree. The best way to make sure that your spruce tree is watered just right is to not pour the water into the container where the tree is planted but to fill either the tray or the outside container with water. This will prevent you from overwatering your spruce tree. If you do not want to use either a tray or an outside container, you can also use sandy soil and pack peat moss around the root ball to make sure your spruce tree stays moist enough but does not get too wet.
In addition, be careful with how much heat you apply to your spruce tree through lights on the tree, so you will not burn or discolor the needles. It is always better to use only miniature lights, especially LED lights, to keep the heat production as low as possible.
It is recommended that you keep your spruce tree inside no more than seven to 10 days. The preferred period of indoor time is, however, only three to four days. Keeping your tree inside longer than that can cause new growth to appear and this new growth is very vulnerable to freezing when you plant your spruce tree back outside.