With snow on the ground and Christmas around the corner, 'tis the season to pick out a Christmas tree.

When choosing a tree, Manitoba Christmas Tree Growers Association president Cliff Freund says if you buy a real tree instead of an artificial one, you're buying a natural product versus something plastic and manufactured.

Freund also owns CD Trees, a Christmas tree farm near Steinbach, and says while they're busy helping customers during the holiday season, they also put a lot of work into the trees throughout the year.

"Besides the trimming, it's just sort of the regular maintenance of grass trimming to make sure the grasses and that don't compete too much with the trees when they're small," he says, noting the Scots Pines need to be trimmed in July and tinted in fall so they don't yellow.

"They pines, they take about seven years before we cut anything out of the field," he says, "the white spruce, they're more about, you know, nine, ten years. We've also dabbled a bit with balsam Fir. They even take longer yet, but we haven't done many of them. It seems they don't grow that well for us.

When it comes to picking the right Christmas tree for your home, Freund suggests to look for what size will the the space you have. Then once the tree is home, he recommends giving it a fresh cut and making sure it has plenty of water, but not too much heat or sunlight.