Maintaining Lower Branches while Growing Sacrifice Branch

[Joe Dupre']

One thing I found out------- you can't make the tree grow faster by pruning it. You can make certain PARTS of a tree grow faster by pruning everything else. Example: bald cypress. Left to it's own devices, they will grow an ever increasing crown of straight up branches. To get the bottom branches to grow, I normally trim the top shoots 2-3 times a week in summer. My experience is that trying to do everything at once slows the total growth of the tree. Growing an apex is pretty fast once the bottom branches are the size you want.

 

[Lumaca]

One thing I found out------- you can't make the tree grow faster by pruning it. You can make certain PARTS of a tree grow faster by pruning everything else. Example: bald cypress. Left to it's own devices, they will grow an ever increasing crown of straight up branches. To get the bottom branches to grow, I normally trim the top shoots 2-3 times a week in summer. My experience is that trying to do everything at once slows the total growth of the tree. Growing an apex is pretty fast once the bottom branches are the size you want.

Yeah... I was just worried that backbudding won't happen so I always try to keep lower buds alive at the cost of growth I guess...