Greg,

“Why is it that the best looking branches on new trees rarely are nicely spaced?” – I suspect they’re crowded in the fields; instead of getting lateral light, jammed tree to tree in tight rows, they send the majority of their growth up and to one side, south. 'Up’ is their nature; it’s up to us to train them and strain them, if not snap them in the process!

Actually, I’ve done the same split-job on trees – but on purpose! If I’m in trusting company, I’ll grab limbs like that and begin describing that 'if they were allowed to continue like this and got a heavy crop or snow load' – Snap! Their eyes bug out and I reach for my loppers to make the same heading cut you did. Though their shocked reaction is priceless, I tell them “Better now than five years from now,” with a heavy crop… They seem to believe me~

“I lopped off the whole top and now have a 'open vase' tree with 5 branches." "I know there are different ways to prune trees, but I have decided to try and get the best shape started from planting from now on.” – Well done! Welcome to the club!! Yes, that was the right move at the right time. With the unavoidable root loss in transplanting, severing these poorly ‘placed’ main limbs when you did is perfect. The energy it has stored should ‘beef up’ the remaining branches, and if they’re the least bit spindly, it will likely shoot up ‘new’ branches (water sprouts to begin with) from near the crown; you can easily work with them to form 'better branches' if necessary.

Usually I won’t tempt myself, treed-out, I work hard to avoid the nursery areas of stores. …But noticing a couple weeks ago my local Fred Meyer store had a fresh shipment of multi-grafted and regular fruit trees … the pull was too much as I found myself sizing them up. I analyzed / scrutinized their multi-grafted trees, up to five apple varieties on one. They were all budded off the main stock with “Parafilm.” If the bud didn’t take, it wasn’t labeled – but no price break~ They do look tempting, and had me working to recall why it was we/I don’t recommend them… I moved along, the only one out there on a cold early morning … and can still feel the pull!

No longer the ‘standard,’ over-planted varieties of yesteryear, they’ve definitely moved into the Twenty-first Century! And though the duel-grafted Japanese plums looked great, it was the stand-alone apples and pears that most tempted me. I couldn’t help but ‘pick out’ the best limbed trees, and half-wished I was still working in the garden center … helping a customer with a twinkle in their eye asking my advise on which to buy… “This, this, and this!” But we know what gets left. If I’d gained their trust, before loading a newly purchased fruit tree, I’d offer to prune it, roots too; that way I knew it was off to a good start. Other’s would react as if, “Hey – I just paid for that!”

Yes, you’ve arrived