Raising the perfect tree

Gary Chastagner, who has been working for more than two decades to determine which varieties of trees are the best at keeping their needles, says that for him, Christmas trees are more about business than they are about tradition or holiday sentimentality. This hour on Focus, host Jim Meadows talks with Chastagner, a plant pathologist and professor at Washington State University, about the research that goes into helping tree farmers know what they need to know to the kinds of trees that consumers demand.

Then, during the second half of this hour on Focus, we’ll hear from Ron Evans, a second generation Christmas tree farmer based in Decatur, Ill., about caring for and raising his trees. He operates farms in Illinois and in Wisconsin and says running a Christmas tree farm is more complicated than it seems.