When cut fresh and placed in water promptly your Fresh Cut tree should last from Thanksgiving until after Christmas without drying out.

First of all the most important thing you can do for your tree is place it in water promptly
after cutting.  Trees can go between six and eight hours after cutting without water and still be able to take water up. The next thing to do is make sure it’s water never runs out.  Once the water supply is cut off even for a seemingly short period the trunk of the tree begins to “heal” over with sap just as an injured tree repairs itself.  This seals off the ability of the tree to take in water.

Although many people have different ‘things’ they add to the tree’s water bowl in order to keep the tree drinking water, we highly recommend Prolong® brand tree preservative.  We have been using Prolong® even before we began selling Christmas trees and only provide it as a service to our customers.  It has been debated whether you need to use any kind of preservative, and the answer is you might not, but Prolong® does provide nutrients the tree naturally requires when it is growing, so we believe it is better than water alone.