The clock is ticking for Londoners looking to grab a live Christmas tree

Londoners still looking to pick up a live Christmas tree for the holiday season shouldn't wait much longer as stockpiles across the city are quickly being bought up despite higher prices.

It took less than two weeks for Colborne Street United Church to sell 780 trees this year, said Jim Lodge, who organizes the annual Christmas tree sale.

"We had 80 trees fewer than we ordered, that's almost a week's worth, so I wasn't surprised," Lodge said.

For those who already managed to snap one up, Lodge said Fraser firs have been a popular option. They retailed between $85 and $135, depending on size.

"They're usually more symmetrical in shape, the branches are a little stiffer and it has a straighter trunk," Lodge said. "It's the Cadillac of Christmas trees."

Van Luyk Greenhouses and Garden Centre in London still has some trees left, but not for long.

"We're expecting everything will be sold out by this weekend," said Santhosh Kumar, the greenhouse's operations manager.

Prices have also been steadily increasing, with a jump of two to three dollars per tree a year on the wholesale side, he said.

"Everything's gone up and our wholesaler has already informed us it's going to be increasing next year as well," Kumar said.

Both Van Lyuk Greenhouse and Colborne Street United Church both get their trees from Sloan Nursery and Christmas Trees in Bothwell, Ont.

Retiring farmers and low interest in the business leading to shortages

A good yearly crop of trees for the tree farm is around 30,000, but this year there were only 18,000 available for sall across southwestern Ontario thanks to a shortage that's been affecting the industry for years, said William Sloan Jr., who runs the tree farm.

"Farmers just quit planting for a year several years back because of a surplus," Sloan said.

Prices have nearly doubled over the last six years, he added. 

Sloans has been increasing the number of trees planted each year, from 25,000 to 45,000 to help deal with the shortage, but the several-year growth cycle means those trees won't alleviate the shortage for another two to three years, at least. 

"Another problem is a lot of big wholesale growers are getting old and they're just not replanting. You have tons of little you-cuts going — people planting a couple thousand trees on four or five acres — but that can't sustain demand," Sloan said.

Long wait times to see see a return on investment, the massive acreage of land required and the myriad problems a tree farm can face outside of a farmer's control are also factors why the business isn't growing, he added.

"You can lose trees to drought, you can lose them to terrain, they can drown," he said. "I don't know a lot of people who want to [do this], no matter how much money there is in it."