The holidays are over and your Christmas tree has delightfully served its purpose. So now what?
Instead of kicking your Christmas tree to the curb, why not re-purpose it for something great?! Here are ten ways you can repurpose your Christmas tree after the holidays.
What To Do With Your Christmas Tree After Christmas:
1. Mulch Your Yard
The most common of ways to re-purpose your Christmas tree. You can actually turn your tree into mulch for your yard or garden. Start by cutting the branches off of your tree and then remove the pine needles from your branches.
Set the pine needles aside and use a wood chipper to chop the branches into small pieces. Wood chips can be used on all types of landscape to suppress pesky plants and weeds while pine needles, being full of nutrients, can be used to enhance the pH of your soil.
(Spring is just around the corner, why not set your yard up for success?)
2. Have a Bonfire
Evergreens are extremely sap-heavy trees, making them great for firewood. Being that it’s so flammable, sap burns hot and fast so it’s best if used for outdoor firewood. Using this wood in your home can create somewhat of a fire hazard for your home, so be careful to make sure your Cchristmas tree wood doesn’t mix in with your furnace wood.
3. Replant Your Tree
With Christmas just ending, you probably aren’t thinking about next Christmas just yet. But–if your tree is still alive and has been properly watered all season, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to replant it and use it next Christmas too! You can even place a bird feeder on it and make your tree a nice wildlife habitat.
4. Create Pathways
Create pathways to your home or shed using the trunk of your Christmas tree. Cut your tree trunk into slices and use it as stepping stones or, create path markers along existing paths!
You can even get creative and paint the tree trunks white to help you find your way at night.
5. Replenish Your Garden
If you opted to use your tree as firewood, you can repurpose it again and use the ashes from your bonfire. After you’ve finished burning the wood, take the ashes from the pit and spread them on your garden. The ashes contain potassium, lime and other nutrients that help plants grow and thrive. Make sure you use the ash from wood, not coal.
Bonus: Ashes also help to prevent insects from snacking on your plants!
6. Insulate Your Garden
The branches from your tree can be used in your garden to help with proper insulation. Cut the branches from the tree and simply lay them in your garden. The boughs will protect your plants from really cold weather and really warm weather. This gives plants a steady temperature no matter what the season. The limbs from your tree can also border your garden as garden edges.
7. Arts and Crafts
For the Pinterest lovers, there’s nothing you can’t do when it comes to arts and crafts with tree wood! Make some wooden ornaments for next year by using a saw to cut thin wooden slices out of your tree trunk, then decorate them however you’d like. You can also use this method to create wooden drink coasters.
Some other options include, but are not limited to, branch candlesticks, tealight logs, wood slice clocks and much more. Let you inner craftsman out by re-purposing your tree for arts and crafts!
8. Give Back
Christmas trees are a valuable renewable source, and there are organizations all over the country that want yours post-Christmas season. This is a little thing we like to call “tree-cycling”. Christmas trees submerged in a pond create a wonderful habitat for fish and water creatures. The weight of the tree keeps it anchored to the bottom and fish are able to feed off of it and live in it.
Christmas trees can also be used to restore coastal dunes and stream banks. You can even donate it to your local zoo! It turns out tigers really love playing with Christmas trees–who knew?
9. Return Your Tree
Depending on where you purchased your Christmas tree, many farms will actually take the tree back post Christmas! The tree decomposes naturally and the nutrients from the tree can be used to fertilize the soil for next year’s trees.
Let the season of giving live on by doing something different with your old Christmas tree this year. There’s an option for everyone!
Many of the things we mentioned have to do with recycling or reusing your tree to help maintain your yard and garden. As experts in lawn care, we love hearing about new, eco-friendly ways to care for our lawns. Our lawn care team would love to help you and your lawn. Schedule a lawn service with us today!