I’m looking for some help on what to do here. I admittedly didn’t do a great job pruning and balancing the tree year last year and one side of the vase just shot up.
I don’t know if I should prune off the largest leader about 12" long where a small branch is growing up and out, or if I should just keep it and encourage it to be the leader.
I’m open to either an open vase style or central leader, I don’t really need a ton of production, just something that looks good and has a nice size and shape once mature. I don’t want a really short and open look like you would find at an orchard so I’m concerned that pruning off the leader will force the tree to be shorter and wider or that such a big pruning (compared to the size of the tree would hurt the tree).
I’m also concerned about leaving the leader and having it be a issue as the tree gets older, or being unable to balance the tree out in the future.
Yes, just let it focus on establishing itself a bit. Even without pruning it will balance itself out to some extent as long as it’s healthy. It’s not gonna waste all that space by not growing branches to take advantage of all that sunshine. Most likely you’ll see lots of side branch growth next year, but lets just consider what would happen even if it doesn’t. Worse case scenario, it keeps focusing energy on that one main branch. If that happens, it’s likely to get top heavy and lean over which will cause a hormone shift that wakes up lower buds and causes them to start pushing more branches. Basically, you’re either gonna get better branching sooner, or you’re gonna get it later, but it’s gonna happen with or without pruning.
