A year in the life of...........
Hans Schurmann
Christmas Tree Farmer

Prince Albert, the German husband of Queen Victoria, is generally considered to have popularised his country's tradition of Christmas trees in England, so it is fitting that Hans Schurmann, a fellow countryman, should be continuing that tradition. Hans and his wife Teresa run Marldon Christmas Tree Farm in Totnes Road, Marldon. They opened their business in 1994, four years after Hans started growing Christmas trees on a plantation on Dartmoor. Today they have 36 acres under cultivation and 16 in Marldon, and with around 4000 trees per acre, that's an awful lot of trees.

In the past Christmas tree growing was rather a casual affair. The trees were frequently the first thinnings from forestry plantations, or just planted in a field and ignored for five years before harvesting. Times have indeed changed. Hans treats his crop with the assiduousness of any arable farmer, nurturing, feeding and shaping the trees so each one develops a perfect form.

Christmas trees are only in the public consciousness for a few short weeks each year, and it is during this time that Hans makes his money, but the cultivation of the product that we so casually display in our homes in late December has been an on-going process that started at least five years earlier. When he first cleared his ground for planting in 1990, Hans had the frightening prospect of not earning a penny from his investment for half a decade - not only that, but having the regular outlay of cash for stock, equipment, fertilisers and weedkiller.

The traditional Christmas tree is the Norway Spruce. It is cheap, easy to grow and needs minimum planting space. However, if not properly looked after, it will eventually drop its needles. Hans grows 14 different species of tree, and 50% of his plantations are turned over to the increasingly popular needle-fast trees such as the Noble, Fraser and Corkbark Firs, and Lodgepole Pines. The Fraser Fir is obviously one of his favourites, and he waxes quite lyrical about it.

"People call it the primadonna of trees," he says. "It's so beautiful, but it's really difficult to grow successfully." Indeed the little trees, with their dense, blue-grey foliage, really do seem to be something special. Hans' year starts in winter with the clearing of the ground and analysis of the soil. Any nutrient deficiencies will have been rectified by the application of the appropriate fertiliser, and once the ground is ready, he will start planting in February.

The trees come from a specialist nursery as 3 year old seedlings, and Hans and his two fellow workers will then have a frenzied and back-breaking two-week period, each planting out 800 trees a day by hand, each seedling in its own designated space. The ground will be fertilised in March, a couple of weeks before the buds burst, then in April, when the warmer weather and burgeoning plant growth provide optimum conditions for plant pests, Hans will be keeping a close eye out for aphid infestations.

At first sign, he will spray with a "ladybird friendly" insecticide, ladybirds being a natural aphid predator. "You have to be quick with aphids," he says. "if you don't control them immediately they can ruin a whole plantation." Rust mites and Red Spider mites can also damage the crop, as can larger animals such as deer, mice and rabbits, although Hans encourages buzzards into his plantations to control the two latter by placing perches amongst the trees. May is the month of warfare against weeds, which compete with the trees for nutrients, and can smother and kill the lower branches. In June there will be a brief respite, when he can catch up on all the routine maintenance jobs around the farm, then in July the business of shaping the trees begins. It is this process of hand clipping which Hans considers the formula for his success in producing perfect specimens, shortening the main shoot - the "leader" - if it is too long, clipping off erratic or lopsided growth and sculpting the tree into its traditional pyramidal form.

If weather conditions are good with plenty of rainfall, the trees may have a second flush of growth and then he has to clip them all over again. Trees can only be successfully harvested once they have entered their period of winter dormancy, and this doesn't reliably take place till November. The next few weeks represent the most frenetic period of Hans' year. Hans sells direct to the public from his Marldon plantation.

Here you can buy both cut and containerised large pot grown trees, trees with roots, (the latter in festive red pots) All the cut trees will be netted for easy transportation and the containerised trees bagged to keep your car clean. He will also give you guidelines for looking after your tree to maximise its life, and advise you how to dispose of it after Christmas in an environmentally friendly way. With Christmas over, there's a brief period of rest before the ground is cleared again, prior to new planting to replace the harvested trees. And then the whole cycle starts again.