Fruits and Nuts: How NOT to prune a Tree 2: Take me to your Leader, 1 by pollengarden

pollengarden wrote:
And here is proof I almost learn from my mistakes.

I bought this little apple tree because of its nice branching pattern. However, there was one branch competing with the leader near the top. I tried to spread it wider, forced it too far, and it started to split. I bound white grafting tape around the injury. Instead of spreading it wider, I am going to prune it back to an outward facing bud. It isn't established enough to prune yet, which is why I didn't do that in the first place.

The picture also shows the nursery ID tags. A word of caution about those: I had a tree where the tag underneath was so tight it girded and eventually killed the tree. I didn't realize what was happening until too late because the outer tag was looser and hid the tag underneath.