Keeping a Yule tree fresh

By Liz Poppens

Inman News Features

Getting a real pine tree to decorate the house right after Thanksgiving, as many people do, has always meant risking a nearly dried-out specimen, and a genuine fire hazard, by Christmas Day.  Most days the scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory outside of Chicago spend their time solving the mysteries of the universe chasing down quarks and other fundamental particles of matter. But this holiday season, a few put their heads together to solve an equally knotty problem: how to keep a real Christmas tree green and fire-resistant all holiday season long.  The answer is not a complex scientific formula, Fermilab reports, but a simple recipe of a few relatively common household ingredients that together give a tree just what it needs to stay alive, aromatic and safe.

• 2 cups corn syrup
• 2 ounces laundry bleach
• 2 pinches of Epsom salts
• ½ tsp. Borax
• 1 tsp. chelated iron
• Two gallons of hot water
• Two-gallon bucket
• Christmas tree stand with well for water

Fill bucket with hot water up to an inch from the rim. Add rest of the ingredients and stir until dissolved. Cut off one inch from bottom of the tree’s trunk (straight across, not angled). Set tree into bucket for 24 hours. Remove tree to stand and set up.  Fill well with solution from bucket. Top off daily with remaining solution from the bucket.  You can purchase corn syrup, laundry bleach and Borax from the grocery store; Epsom salts from the drug store; and chelated iron from your local garden center.  So why will this solution work? It’s a chemical thing, say the Fermilab scientists.  The corn syrup contains sugar, which helps the trunk of the tree take up the water it needs. Borax contains boron, which allows the tree to move water and sugar to every branch and needle.  Magnesium in the Epsom salts, along with the chelated iron, help the tree to stay green. The bleach prevents damaging mold from growing in the water.  Now if they could just figure out a quick way to untangle the tinsel from the store.