"As a sales point of view the long and the skinny and the short and the fat do not sell well. There is a certain ratio, about 1 metre to 1.6m, a certain shape that fits into people's psyche which looks like a tree.
"Some people want a small tree. Some want the biggest and mightiest they can find. When a family turns up, dad always goes for the biggest, mum goes for symmetry and proportion whereas the children just go for the most expensive."
He was regularly accused of trying to relive his childhood.
"I like Christmas. I make no apologies for it. I do the Santa thing. I've got seven children, but my wife has eight [children] because she is married to the biggest kid in town."
He had priced 1200 trees for this year's Christmas season, between $15 and $58 a trunk, and would plant 1000 new trees a year.
He had his work cut out for him constantly battling off possums, rabbits and pukeko along with pruning and shaping the trees three times a year.
When he started planting them, he thought he had a "sweet" gig, he said.
"I would be able to plant the trees and come back in three to four years, make an amazing divvy and have a Caribbean holiday."
Yet the trees had to be sprayed, trimmed and fertilised annually, too, with only the three- to four-week window where people would actually buy them, he said.
Aged 61 now, he would keep growing the festive trees for as long as he could, he said.
Christmas tree care: To extend the life of your tree Fill a bucket with three-quarters of water and dissolve two Aspirin or Disprin in the water. Add water to your Christmas tree regularly as they drink a lot of water, larger ones up to three litres a day. As an optional additive, pour half a cup of lemonade (provides sugar which feeds the tree), and a teaspoon of bleach in the water (which would keep the bacterial growth in the water down).
