I have an Avocado tree which is about 8 months old which recovered from a bad case of transplant shock a short time ago. I had to top a large amount of foliage off of it. This resulted in many lateral buds to start growing, three of which looked to turn into promising branches near the top. The problem is, at some point, the bud at the very top began to grow much more rapidly than the other branches and has since taken dominance and has 3 or 4 sets of healthy leaves now. The other shoots have stalled. This happened once before when the plant was younger and I was trying to stimulate branching by topping it. It resulted in one bud that took dominance and has since taken the place of the terminal shoot and grown straight up and other than a knuckle halfway down the plant one wouldn't have guessed it had ever been cut. I don't want this to happen again as this is a container plant. My question is,what is the correct course of action to take? I've been waiting for the new foliage on the actively growing shoot to mature before doing anything but is there any point to this? Should I wait, or should I pinch off the growing tip from this shoot sooner than later to get the half-developed lateral shoots below it to mature into branches or will this just keep repeating forever where the lower branches will mature for some time only to be shut down once things start growing on the topmost bud again? It seems like getting multiple branches to actively grow on this thing simultaneously is a pipe dream. Any advice? Thanks!
This is grown from a pit, or is it a graft? From pits, the trees always exhibit this strong apical dominance, and even if you pinch that bud back before it leafs out, you'll only get a little bit of growth in your lateral limbs before the crown shoot takes off again. Once it's about 8 feet tall, it will start directing energy to the lateral growth, but before then you're kind of doomed. Oddly enough, grafted avocadoes show absolutely no sign of this - my guess is that they believe they're mature trees and have no reason to do the crown-shooting thing.
This is a pit grown plant. I've always read suggestions about pinching back the avocado (always in the context of a pit grown plant) when young to stimulate lateral growth. I certainly hope I'm not wasting my time trying to break it's determination to reach the ceiling of my loft as a twig. :)
