9 Reasons to Start Brush Clearance Now

The offers the following reasons to prepare for wildfire season right now:

• Save money on clearance and disposal! This is the big reason to start now! Sadly, there will be no Chipper Program this year - this generous grant-funded program was a victim of budget cutbacks out of our control. Monrovia is working with Athens Disposal to prepare for increased brush and green waste disposal, but it is all but certain that residents who have used the chipper program in the past will have to bear a greater portion of their disposal costs this year. Doing your brush clearance gradually allows you to fully use the capacity of your allotted green waste bins, or perhaps home compost the cuttings yourself. If you wait until your brush pile is huge, you will need to pay more for the disposal costs.

• Reduce erosion hazard. If you have a brush-covered or wooded hillside to maintain, please do not "clear" it to the ground! Pruning and cutting weeds gradually over the course of the next few months will let you be more selective, and leave selected deep-rooted plants in place. You may also be able to place some of the larger limbs on the ground to help stabilize the soil against erosion. Please contact the Fire Department at (626) 256-8109 with any questions you might have on where it is okay to leave certain cuttings and other best practices for managing hillside vegetation.

• Get more out of free gardening workshops. Getting started now will let you see which parts of your landscape are producing excess flammable vegetation and enable you to take advantage of free programs that help you reduce watering, choose lower-maintenance plants, and receive free materials such as mulch and compost. Sustainable landscaping workshops will be offered starting in March by the Council for Watershed Health as well as the city of Monrovia. The Council for Watershed Health will shortly be announcing the availability of its 2012 Landscaping Lightly Calendar, with beautiful custom artwork. A link will be posted in this space when available.

• Avoid harm to bird nests. In Southern California, the typical bird breeding season begins in February and peaks in the spring and early summer. Getting a good deal of your heavier pruning done in January and early February can really reduce your impact on breeding birds! For more information, check out Los Angeles Audubon's tree trimming pamphlet.

• Work in cool weather. But do avoid working on dry, windy days, and make sure your equipment has spark arrestors. While the newly-growing weeds may be fresh and moist, most shrubs and trees are at their driest in winter until they come out of dormancy, so care needs to be taken, especially when winds blow.

• Save your back. Do a little at a time.

• Encourage desirable plants and healthy plant growth. Many deep-rooted, drought-tolerant natives are coming out of dormancy at this time. By trimming away competing overgrowth, you will give these desirable plants room to grow. There is also still time for winter planting in spaces you create by removing rank growth. Woody groundcovers such as lantana can be pruned back hard or mowed now, then watered and fertilized to produce fresh growth and flowers later in the season.

• Prevent early blooming weeds from going to seed. Weedy fields are already turning a luscious green - it may look pretty now, but those plants are busy creating seed for next year's growth, which will just perpetuate the problem later in the season when the weeds dry out. Annual weeds such as wild oat, foxtails, thistles, flower, and set seed die earlier than our native wildflowers and grasses, so they extend the fire season. Start mowing or weed-whacking now to gradually reduce the weed seed bank in the soil.

• Use . Place mulch on the openings you create and give it a chance to settle in with a few good rains (hopefully) to come. See the City website for details of the mulch giveaway event January 21st and 28th.