Last weekend I had my first go at pruning the plum tree and after a comment from a visitor to the blog it seemed that I had done it all wrong.  Indeed, after taking the good person’s advice and googling “topping off” it became clear that I had make a bit of a mistake with it all.   So today, I revisited the tree and had a go at sorting it out.    Just cutting at will the branches and “topping off” promotes greater amount of new growth on the cut parts and so I suppose you end up with a bit of trouble during the growing season with the bits at the cutting growing a lot faster than elsewhere and possibly resulting in a bit of a uneven tree.

Following my reading up during the week, I tackled all the large branches that I have just left pointing up and took them down to more suitable points in the tree.   My first attempted here again, but hopefully a lot better with the main branches cut way below the rest of the tree meaning new more rapid growth lower down within the tree instead of at the top.

I am not fully sure if I have done it right still, but possibly a better attempt than last week?   Either way, we saved some of the off cuts to make “log pets”.   We have a mixture here, the ones with three eyes or one eyes are not mistakes, they are alien log pets!