Open canopy reset for a little Julie mango tree in Mililani (Oahu)!
Today's trees include a dwarf Julie mango and a "dwarf" seedling avocado.
The mango was crowded, center canopy was dense and had basically no light and little airflow. So, we opened her up and reduced the main branches down to 5, trimmed crossing, vertical, and downward branches to get things flowing.
Normally I'd prefer 3-4 main branches but taking more away would be a little too much for this small tree.
We also took all the end branches back to keep the tree small and manageable plus new growth will flush out at the edges of each branch now and produce flowers. The idea is less leaves more fruit.
The avocado (not included video) was a seedling from marketplace that the client was told is a dwarf tree, but the growth habit is not... Plus seedlings have mixed generics so who knows what you get.
Because this tree is near fruiting age (6ish years) we opted to keep most of the tree in tact and wait to see how the fruit turns out. But as a backup plan, I grafted on some sharwill when I too worked one of the main branches.
This tree also had several not ideal codominant branches. For that, we pruned one and topped another. Leaving 2 codominant branches but taking back the end weight and height of each to reduce the chance that those codominant inclusions will cause a failure as the tree matures.
Really excited that the weather has been cooperating lately. I hope it holds out so I can help reset more fruit trees!