Drought kills 90 percent of newly planted Christmas trees

Heat and drought have killed around 90 percent of newly planted Christmas trees in Lower Austria, ORF reported. Supplies for this Christmas are secure, but the damage could affect sales in years to come.

The dry summer has left young trees with brown needles across the region’s Christmas tree farms. The losses mean extra work and financial costs for about 280 growers.

Grower Christian Eder, whose farm is in the town of Maria Laach am Jauerling in Krems district, tried watering his young trees, but the effort made little difference. It took him three days to water one field, and he said the trees would need watering every week.

The drought prevented newly planted trees from developing enough roots. Affected trees have grown only a few centimetres of new roots, compared with the roughly 20 centimetres normally expected, said Josef Reithner, head of Lower Austria’s Christmas tree growers’ association.

A single dry summer is manageable for growers, Reithner said, but repeated drought years would force them to replace dead trees and buy new plants. If such conditions occur four or five years in a row, he said, growers may have to consider another line of business.

Eder is considering installing drip irrigation, which would deliver water slowly through hoses directly to the trees’ roots. The young trees affected this year would take five to 10 years, depending on their size, to become ready for sale. The impact of this year’s drought is therefore expected to show up in sales only in the coming years.