River's Edge
Masterpiece
At this stage i would, until the tree has been transplanted in another site and regained health. Proper development requires vigor and reducing the strength of the tree would only slow the recovery. The needles are not shading anything at this stage......so you would keep needles in the area circled with yellow?
Once the tree is re-established in a new site, then i would assess.
For example if those needles were to strengthen and produce needle buds, then shoots. A sacrifice branch or new apical leader may become useful at that site! Keeping one or two shoots lower on the apical leader can allow for a stronger response to cut back, creating new buds lower down below the sacrifice branch without having to reduce the main apical stem and slow down the overall thickening as much.
Based on this persons limited picture lower shoots are few and weak, the opposite of what is desired. The longer that continues the more difficult it will be to develop this tree properly!
Ideally you wish to have lots of shoots, lower branches and healthy growth lower down before running off to the races and focussing on apical terminal growth. It is to hard to develop after the fact. trust me, i spend a lot of time grafting lower branches on field grown stock that the first priority was thickness at the cost of developing and retaining lower branching for future design and use as sacrifice branches for further development of taper, movement and desired final thickness. The picture below illustrates the stage when sufficient strength and lower branching is becoming suitable for allowing the apical leader to become the focus.
Once again there are caveats, such as how large a scar do you wish to create with the first apical sacrifice. Is it better to use multiple sacrifice leaders in sequence above and then below the primary branch to obtain taper, additional movement and all the while continuing thickening the trunk but have smaller scars in selected locations to aid in design options.
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