SavATree’s Woodland Fire Prevention & Fruit Reduction Programs

SavATree’s Woodland Fire Prevention Program

You may have noticed our trucks around the outskirts of your community, especially the Glen Arden area. Fire safety is very important to us, and we’ve created a fire clearance program to reduce the fire risk of woodland areas to your homes, while maintaining their beauty and health.

As part of this initiative, we are carefully pruning lower branches up to 8 feet high to remove what’s known as the “fire ladder,” which can allow flames to climb into the tree canopy. We’re also clearing out dry, dead wood that could fuel a fire.

To maintain a healthy and fire-resistant landscape, we are spreading a light layer (2-3 inches) of wood chip mulch. This helps suppress more flammable grasses while improving soil health. Over time, as the mulch breaks down, it’s fire resistance increases even further.

Wildfires are a natural part of our environment, but with the right precautions, we can greatly reduce the risk to our homes and communities. These fire safety measures align with best practices in woodland management and will help protect both property and nature. We’ll see you around as we continue to work on fire clearance pruning throughout the spring and summer.

For further information, you may find these sources helpful:

On flammability of mulch vs. grass: https://www.uidaho.edu/-/media/uidaho-responsive/files/extension/topic/forestry/f15-mulches-for-firewise-landscapes.pdf

About fire ladders: https://ucanr.edu/blog/real-dirt/article/be-firewise-fire-resistant-landscaping

Fruit Reduction on Villages’ Olives and Liquidambars

We know that, while beautiful, the olive, plum and liquidambar trees lining many of the streets at the villages produce fruits which can be messy and hazardous underfoot. SavATree has developed a comprehensive program to reduce the fruit load on these trees as much as possible. The first part, currently underway, is two precisely timed sprays applied to the bark, just before and just after flowering, on each tree. These sprays consist of a low-toxicity hormone that causes the trees to drop some of their fruits just as they start forming, before they get big enough to slip on or cause a mess. However, interference from these hormones does not cause all the fruits to drop even under perfect conditions, and weather plays a big role in how well they work. SavATree expects about twenty percent of the newly forming fruits to drop from these applications. In order to further decrease the amount of fruit that continues to develop, SavATree will strategically time annual maintenance pruning of  the olives, plums and liquidambars, in order to use this opportunity to prune off additional developing fruits before they are big enough to drop.

To learn more about how fruit reduction sprays work: https://ipm.ucanr.edu/agriculture/olive/fruit-spray-thinning