I'm new to this, so have been researching online and still am not sure. . . We have this tree that was planted by previous tenants about 4 years ago. It's about 16' tall maybe more and has never really been pruned. It is slightly slanted and from my research seems to have a competing leader- a branch growing vertically that is pretty much as large as the central leader in diameter and length. I'm supposing that this second leader is weighing the tree down and this is why it is slanting? Is it really a problem?, most of what I have seen about this seems to be about very young trees. Another question is timing, I was waiting until after flowering but if I do remove the second leader completely it would be pretty drastic- so should I wait for dormancy? Most sites seem to say remove 10-15% in a regular pruning. Also, the second leader has a fork also with a good sized branch coming off of it that angles out rather than up, would that be a good alternative to cut to that branch rather than taking off the whole thing? Any help is appreciated, it seems so drastic i'm wondering if i ought to just leave it and take out just the smaller crossed branches. Thanks!
okay here are some pics, the garden looks rather junky in these shots - but it's really quite nice. . . here is the tree, you can see I took off some lower twiggy branches during dormancy. thanks for any advice.
From what I can see I wouldnt be too concerned. The tree is fairly densely branched, consider thinning it a bit next winter, using proper pruing cuts (www.treesaregood.com). When the leaders are similiar in size and the branch attachment is more of a "V" shape it is more disconcerting (sp?).
