The summer heat dome was a wake-up call for the Pacific Northwest. Crops like wheat were hit hard by triple digit temperatures, but they weren’t the only ones suffering. Christmas tree farmers throughout Oregon saw adult trees burned and some reported losing over 90% of the seedlings they planted this year. We’ll hear from Mike Abbot, owner of Bob’z Tree Farm and Chal Landgren, Oregon State University Extension professor.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. This summer’s heat dome was a wake up call for the Pacific Northwest. Crops like wheat were hit hard by the triple digit temperatures, but they weren’t the only ones to suffer. Many Christmas tree farmers in Oregon, the largest producers of the trees in the country, saw scorched adult trees and totally destroyed seedlings. For more on what happened and what it means for the future, I’m joined by two Christmas tree growers. Mike Abbot is the owner of Bob’z Tree Farm in Estacada; Chal Landgren grows trees in Warren, in Columbia County. He is also an Extension Professor at Oregon State University. Welcome to you both.
Mike Abbot, Chal Landgren: Well, thank you. Good afternoon.
Miller: And good afternoon to you. Mike Abbot, first. What do you most remember about the heat dome in June?
Mike Abbot: The heat wave and just what it did to the trees with the new growth, how it either curled it or burnt it and what we had to do after that. Yeah.
Miller: What did you have to do after that?
Abbot: Well, just to take care of tying up tops and supporting that foliage because of the way that it was bent and if we wouldn’t have done that, it would have hardened, laid over and mostly just waiting to see what the results were of what it did to the trees.
Miller: Can you give us a sense for what your farm looked like in the days that followed, in early July? What did you see as you walked among your trees?
Abbot: Well, the different trees were affected differently at different times. Nobles took awhile longer for their damage to show up as far as the burned needles and things and, I’m not sure how to answer that. It really took a long time for it to figure out, and just seeing what did happen, and it seemed like after it rained some of the burned did get better, your Douglas Fir and Grand Fir, we were able to shear off – shear the trees is cutting the burnt foliage off so you couldn’t see it. And then the Nobles and the Nordmann Fir just took time for their damage to come about, we had to cut off a bunch of that damage also. Just nippers.
Miller: And what about the youngest trees on your farm?
Abbot: I think that probably 70% of them died. The seedlings that were planted this year, they died like that, trees that were maybe one or two years old, some of them lost limbs, one part of that limb that stuck out or some of them the whole top died. And so we’re just going to have to wait and see if those do come back. But typically it will never be the same because mother nature does the best at that, the leading top coming out of them.
Miller: Here we’re not talking about woody mass, just that in some abstract sense, right? It needs to be the right shape in order for you to have a customer for it, I imagine?
Abbot: That’s true. I joke a little bit, but they’re like humans when you lose an arm, that’s going to affect that side of the trees, going to be that way, and people like to have trees that are almost perfect or close to it, full shape. So, yes.
Miller: Chal Landgren, can you give us a sense for the broader numbers here? Because I imagine that there are really real variations based on the slope that someone had, the extent to which the sun hit the trees. So there are differences. But overall, what did this massive heat event and the ongoing drought mean for Christmas tree farms in Oregon?
Chal Landgren: Good question, my observation, and it’s more anecdotal, talking to lots of growers, is that for the seedlings, as Mike mentioned, I’d say the overall state loss of Noble Fir seedlings was approaching 70%. So those were, those were the Noble Fir trees that were planted this season. I saw less damage on the Nordmann, Turkish and Douglas Fir that were planted this season. But the numbers were still higher than we would ever like to expect, and that’s the combination of the heat dome and the drought. The heat dome effect tended to be as Mike described. You’d see the tree tries to make itself smaller, so if it didn’t die outright, it tended to discard the top and the top whirl was damaged. So we’re going to be dealing with those effects for a number of years. This isn’t the first year we’ve had summer droughts either, with the last four or five years we’ve seen not the 70% level, but we’ve had mortality of Noble Fir approaching 40%. So those are the seedling damages. On the mature trees, it really depended on site aspect areas of your farm and how the slope orientation was and what the water status of the soil was. So Christmas trees are typically grown without water; so we don’t water trees, we’re hoping to have enough soil water and soil moisture to make it through. So the damage that I saw on the mature trees was again sort of top dieback, top whirl and side branches. On the Noble Fir, I also saw a lot of south side damage where the entire south side of the tree turned red and made the tree unsellable.
Miller: Why is it that Nobles, of these different fir species, seem to have been the ones that were most affected?
Landgren: I think in terms of the root system, Noble Fir tends to have, of the species we grow, commonly a little bit more shallowly rooted. It’s natural habitat in Oregon and Washington is above, say, 2,000 feet in the Coast [Range] and 4,000 feet in the Cascades. So it tends to be a species that is used to higher summer rainfalls, cooler temperatures, whereas Douglas Fir has a wider amplitude of extreme temperatures it’ll adjust to, apparently, and Nordmann and Turkish Fir, they’re accustomed to much more of a Mediterranean climate in Turkey and Georgia. So they tended to do a little bit better.
Miller: So, are you expecting to see more Nordmann and Turkish and Douglas Fir trees grown on Christmas tree farms in the Northwest? I mean, are you expecting growers to start to shift away from Nobles, or Grands?
Landgren: What I’m seeing is that if you have a site up in the Silverton Hills or higher elevations around the Willamette Valley, I think those growers are continuing to grow Nobles, because Nobles do really well and they grow faster than the Turkish and the Nordmann Firs. For those of us that are growing trees or seeding trees and more in the lower elevations of the Willamette Valley, yes, I think we’ll be switching to grow more Nordmann, Turkish and Douglas Fir.
Miller: Mike Abbot. If my take on Oregon elevation is accurate, you’re closer in Estacada to a little bit higher world. You mentioned that you lost 70% of your Noble seedlings – is your plan to just fully replace those with more Nobles or to plant something else?
Abbot: I think we’ll have to wait and see, but we’re almost going to have to probably replace them because I don’t think they’ll ever be the same. I think that the demand is so much for Nobles and just like I’m going through this season right now and at least 70% or more, that’s what people want are the Nobles. And if anything, I’m going to quit growing Douglas just because of the demand and what they’re worth. I only have so much space so I want to grow either Nordmann or the Turkish and the Nordmann Fir, they are more disease resistant, the Turkish and Nordmann and they’re just easier and they’ll grow in wet ground where the Noble won’t. So that’s really what the people want, and so I think that that’s where I’m going to go. One thing I noticed was that the heat drove away pests like we were getting ready to spray for aphids in the Grand Fir and the aphids disappeared, and even my Douglas Fir, they had less disease this year, and that may be something to do with that heat.
Miller: So the first silver lining I’ve heard here is less need to spray because among other things, in addition to killing some trees, the heat did kill some pests.
Abbot: Yeah.
Miller: I want to run a quote by both of you that I read in a recent Oregonian article about this issue. It came from Tom Norby, the President of the Oregon Christmas Tree Growers’ Association. He said this: ‘One year is not a catastrophe. Two years becomes a big problem. Three years, it’s a catastrophe.’ I’m curious if you, if any of you know yet, how serious the lingering effects from this year could be though. In other words, if a catastrophe next year is already baked in? Chal Lundgren, first. Do you have a sense for the lingering effects of the heat and drought?
Landgren: The heat dome effect I hope is a one off – it won’t happen again, sort of an event. But the bigger term, the climate change, dry summer sorts of things I think are going to manifest themselves, over time. And I think Tom’s right in that we’ve had now three or four years of dry, dry summers and high mortality. So we’re going to start seeing, I think less Noble available to consumers, and I think that it’s not something you can turn on a dime and just buy another million noble fir seedlings. So it takes,1-2 years in a nursery to get the seedlings growing and there’s not a lot of available vacant space in nurseries so that they can switch and grow more Noble Fir for Christmas tree growers. I think it’s going to be an issue we’re dealing with, although I think Christmas tree growers are used to a lot of catastrophes. So they’re eternally optimistic.
Miller: Mike Abbot, what are your thoughts about the future of your industry?
Abbot: I think the gentleman’s very much right, and we don’t know what it did to seeds, as far as the future of the cones that are going to produce the seeds, if that’s going to be affected by them, or was that affected? I haven’t talked to the nurseries very much, but I don’t think that they saw the damage, the seedling growers that we did, as Christmas tree growers. So hopefully there will be seedlings available.
Miller: Mike Abbot and Chal Landgren, thanks very much for joining us.
Abbot and Landgren: You’re very welcome.
Miller: Mike Abbot is the owner of Bob’z Tree Farm in Estacada, that’s ‘Bob’z’ with a ‘Z.’ Chal Landgren is a Christmas tree grower himself and Oregon State University Extension Professor. Tomorrow on the show, more and more companies and organizations are incorporating Land Acknowledgments into their work. These statements are intended to show respect to the Indigenous people who have lived on the land for millennia. Many Native groups say these kinds of statements should be the beginning of an institution’s outreach to local tribes, not the end. We’ll hear two Native perspectives on Land Acknowledgments on the next Think Out Loud. If you don’t want to miss any of our shows, you can listen on the NPR One App on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Our nightly re-broadcast is at eight p.m. Thanks very much for tuning in to Think Out Loud on OPB and KLCC. I’m Dave Miller, we’ll be back tomorrow.
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