Holiday Greenery Tipping Pines And Other Trees For Supplemental Income

Alternative Forestry Products  Maple Syrup  Blackberries, Cherries, and Other Berries  Grape Vines  Ginseng  Christmas Trees  Tipping of Pines and other Trees for Holiday Greenery

What can you Tip?  White Pine  Frasier Fir  Boxwoods  Holly Trees  Tipping is cutting the ends of the limbs off which are about 18 inches to 2 feet in length.

Why do you tip?  You tip to make holiday roping for Christmas wreaths and wrapping for railings.  Most is shipped to the Northern U.S.  This is an alternative to the cattle industry as to what you can do with your acreage

Christmas Wreath Making Christmas Wreath Making

Roping Pine Tips Roping Pine Tips

Roping Warehouse Roping Warehouse

Cold Storage

How do you make money tipping?  If you are a land owner you can make money two ways from tipping  1. You can contract with a greenery to have them plant and tip your trees.  2. You can plant and tip them yourself

Advantage to having a contract  You don’t have to do near as much work  The contractor fertilizes, plants and takes care of the trees.  You get paid up front  The contractor tips the trees  You get to keep the trees after they are tipped

Disadvantages to a Contract  You get paid one time and that’s it.  Your land is tied up for at least 14 years.  If you want to sell the land, either the lease follows or it gets tied up in with the land.

Advantages to doing it yourself  You have control over who you sell your tips to.  You can work as hard or as easy as you want but if you work too easy, you could lose money.

Disadvantages to Doing the tipping by yourself  Much more labor intensive  You are responsible for tipping, the health of the tree, fertilizing and infestation if any.

Pine tipping by the Numbers  Startup Costs /acre  $5,000 for the life of the pines for tipping if you do it under a contract  More if you do it yourself – but more labor  Tip starting at age 6 then every other year until they are 14 years old  After that you leave them for pulpwood or sawtimber harvest.  If you harvest your tips yourself, you will get the going rate per lb for tips. Right now the going rate for tips is 17cents per pound.

Boxwood Tips by the Numbers  Startup costs per acre for boxwoods is $1000 to 1,500 per acre  5X5 Spacing so you can mow between them  In 2002 boxwood tips brought 25 cents per pound, that’s $ $3K per acre  In 2003 boxwood tips were bringing 75 cents per pound, that’s 35,000 for 5 acres  Right now (2009) the going rate for boxwoods is 35 cents, it is a commodity price that goes up and down.  Maintenance is a handful of fertilizer at the base of each boxwood per spring.  You can sell for tips, the whole tree or for seedlings

Boxwood tips by the Numbers Cont.  You cannot tip boxwoods until they are age 10. (Actually 7 or 8 if you take care of them)  You can tip them every year after  Boxwood tips are notoriously more lucrative but it takes twice as many boxwood tips to make a pound as pine tips