Adapted from an Eastman Chemical Company employee newsletter, December, 1996
Choose a fresh tree — find a “bad” spot on the tree and bend a branch. It shouldn’t snap; if so, find another one. Ideally, you should be buying one at least 10 days before Christmas.
Make a fresh cut 1” above the bottom of the trunk
Immediately after you make your fresh cut, mix up the following ingredients in a 2 gallon bucket filled almost to the top with HOT water to make your home made preservative:
- 2 cups of Karo syrup
- 2 ounces of liquid chlorine bleach
- 2 pinches of Epsom salt
- 1/2 teaspoon Boraxo
- 1 teaspoon of chelated iron (pronounced “keylated” and found in the garden section)
All of these ingredients should be found in either a grocery store or Wal-Mart.
Stir the ingredients thoroughly in the bucket, then immediately stand the trunk of the tree in this solution. Leave the tree in the bucket until you are ready to decorate inside.
When the tree goes indoors, stand the trunk in the tree stand and decorate as you always do. Then get the bucket filled with your ingredients, draw off the mixture from the bucket and fill the tree stand right up to the top.
How does it work?
The Karo syrup provides the sugar; it is only in the presence of sugar that tremendous amounts of water will be taken up by the exposed tissue at the base of the tree trunk. Without the sugar, only the smallest bit of water will be absorbed. However, in the presence of the sugar, you can expect more than one and a half gallons of the water to be absorbed by the tree during the 10 to 14-day period that the tree is exposed to your homemade preservative.
But Wait, there’s more! Thanks to the boron you have supplied (in the boraxo), the water and sugar will be moved to every needle and branch of your tree. Remember that boron is what makes sugar move, not only in trees but in fruits and vegetables.
Then there’s the Epsom salt and the chelated iron. Epsom salt is magnesium sulfate, and magnesium, together with iron, are the center molecules in the process we know as chlorophyll production. By making the magnesium and iron available to the tree, you’re assuring yourself of green needles, even if the tree was not sprayed at the tree farm before it was shipped to market.
Oh yes, why the liquid chlorine bleach? Chlorine stops mold from forming when water and sugar stand for any period of time. Here, the chlorine stops mold from growing in the bucket and the tree stand.
What are the benefits?
- Your tree will be soaking wet with water — in fact, at least 800% more water than when the tree was growing in the forest.
- The tree will NOT become a fire hazard in your house because it is soaking wet, almost like a sponge.
- Very few needles will drop, no matter what variety of evergreen you choose.
