I have a Duarte Japanese plum that’s been in the ground for two years. Last year it went absolutely crazy with growth after the late frost killed all the fruit. I should have summer pruned it probably but I was scared of fungus so I let it go. It put on probably 2.5-3x it’s size in a single year.
I’m a little stuck on how to prune it now. It has a very large thick central branch that I really want to get rid of to make it more of an open shape but after last year it probably makes up 25% of the entire tree. To make things more uncertain the branches it is shading are at a steeper angle than I’d like and not sure if they will make good long term scaffold branches either.
So I’m looking for advice on which of these branches I should actually remove. Here in the first picture shows the big main central branch in yellow. It splits into two branches a little further up, the one in orange goes back towards the center of the tree. Behind it are the branches it is currently shading in blue.
Here it is from another angle
And finally here in red is all the tree mass that would be removed if I took out that main yellow branch.
Most of my other trees are pretty well behaved growth wise, but I have no idea what to do with this plum.