CHRISTMAS TREES IN GERMANY


By Raimund Kohl
Hoptwiesenweg 5, D69517
Gorxheimertal, Germany

The Christmas tree farm of our family is in Southern Germany's Odenwald county (translated as' Odin Forest", "Odin" was a Germanian God, 5 miles east of the Rhine river valley, about 15 miles north of Heidelberg and 20 miles east of "oggersheim" near Ludwighafen. The farm is named "Helferts-Hof" or "Helferts-farm" which was the former name of the family. Since 1830 their family name has been Kohl because the male farm owner married a female named Kohl, but their neighbors continued to call them the "Helferts family". We can follow our family back to the 16th century and up to the present the same family has owned the farm.

The old farm buildings still exist, for example, the farm house was built in 1791. We have restored the farm house and plan to do also with the other buildings, to make a special atmosphere for our customers. We also have two Haflinger horses ( an Austrian mountain horse species ) children of our customers like to ride.
The farm covers about 100 acres with poor to middle soilquality and partially steep slopes, but with the best climate conditions for growing Christmas trees ( 8. 5 degrees Celsius is the average annual temperature and we receive 90cm of precipitation a year. The land use can be divided into 20 acres cultivated for Christmas trees, 50 acres for timber production and the rest in Meadows. In former years ( also my father ) the farmer had a fulltime job on the farm with a dairy farm before 1970. Now with my profession as a soil scientist, I have a fulltime job in soil protection so I have to operate the Christmas tree farm in the evenings, weekends and at the time of holiday ( 6 free weeks in the year ).

We started growing Christmas trees in 1968, beginning with three acres of Douglas fur. Now we grow Blue spruce 35%, grand room fur ( 20% ),Nordmann fur ( 15 ) % Noble fur ( 1 0 % ), Norway spruce ( 1 0 %) Douglas fur, mountain strain ( 5% ) and others ( 5% ), life Norway and Scotch pine,Nicco fur and Concolor fir. In the future we plan to produce more Nordmann fir ( up to 4 0 % ), Noble fir ( 2 0 % ) and Fraser fir ( 1 0 % to 2 0 % ).

Because of our steep slopes and also for choose and cut, we have to plant our trees with a and hoe and continue to fill in gaps in the rows. We produce our own seedlings, generally as 2+ 2 transplants.

A tree disease of root rot by the fungus armiliaria mellea and the Sitka aphid on blue spruce, cause us to spray with insecticides, but only at heavy infections. Grand fir often suffer with a new fungus needle disease and since application of fungicide is very difficult ( 4 to 5 applicants are needed ), we have stopped producing grand fir.

In late summer we fertilize the adult trees and the Noble fir designed for green production with nitrogen, potash and magnesia for better needle color.
We sell about 3,000 trees each year at prices of about three marks per foot for the cheapest tree species ( Norway spruce ), ( 1 U. S. $=1.5 German marks ) 6 marks per foot for medium priced trees like Grand fir, blue spruce and Austrian pine, and 9 to 10 marks as the upper limit for trees like Noble fir and Nordmann fir. All trees we grow are sold direct to their customers at the farm, with about 5 to 10 % being sold by choose and cut.

Our marketing emphasis is to convince our customers of fresh tree quality with our advertising slogan, "we cut daily fresh", and that we are growing trees with and not against nature ( for example, weed management with sheep, no plastic netting but only sisal filling for baling ).
Another main point in our marketing strategy is to make tree shopping an adventure for our customers. We have an historic and interesting market place here at the farm and also we offer hot apple wine and cookies, where sales are completely devoted for social benefits ( 1994 for street children in Bolivia )."

Most of our customers are from the big cities ofMannheim and Heidelberg and we are very proud of our American customers who live on U. S. Army facilities in those two cities. A problem we face is that the United states Army numbers in Germany have been reduced.


In all of Germany, about 2 0 million trees are marketed to meet demand, with only 5-10 % of these being artificial trees. The old tradition known from the first Christmas trees in Strassburg in the middle of the 16th century and the black forest country give emphasis to Christmas tree sales. About 2-3 million trees are imported mainly from Denmark. The classic species in Germany is the Norway spruce and the white fur which originated from the black forest. At the present time most customers prefer the Colorado blue spruce ( mainly ),Nordmann and Noble furs.
If you ever happen to be in the Heidelberg area of Germany, we invite you to visit our historic Christmas tree farm.

Tour of our farm by American children