Yeah, clearance rack. I have been buying a fair bit of stock so I try to keep it cheap. I had originally passed on the trees when higher because of the short life span but at this price I knew it would be a good tool to try a chop before I try it on a nicer maple. And I would love to let it have a year or two in the ground but like I said I would like to try the new procedure this year. I'm trying to learn as much as possible without doing anything too rash. I have been building my own growing flats out of 1x4 for the rest of my projects. I think this one will get put in a larger pot but done shallow just to remove a small amount off of the bottom. If it's anything like the last neglected plant I worked there won't be any real loss. Next spring I will build or recycle a flat of appropriate depth and width. Now that I know this shouldn't be a real problem it has become an exciting project again. I was approaching this as "it might work, it might not". For the amount of reading I have been doing I feel this will really cement the information for me.

I much prefer them apart. Here is a link that might be useful:

I have a comice pear tree that is overgrown (probably 12 feet tall). I don't think it has ever been pruned before. There's no main trunk that goes all the way to the top. Instead, the main trunk goes up to around 4' and then as it continues up, it successively branches into 4 "trunks", all pointing vertically. Also, there's another smaller comice pear tree growing out of the ground right next (touching) to the trunk of the original comice pear tree. That sucker(?) is around 7' tall. I don't know how old the original pear tree is (it came with the house), but it bore 6 fruit last year. How do I prune the original comice pear tree such that it is not so tall? What do I do with the smaller pear tree growing right next to it? Do I chop it off at ground level or try to dig it out? The cherry tree (came with the house too) was trained to be an espalier, but then neglected, so that the main trunk and topmost branches shot upwards until it reached about 10'. How do I prune the cherry tree? Can anyone help? Thanks so much!

All your comments and advice are terrific. I'm not involving the police on this one. I have involved them before though. A "neighbor" (such a benign word for a family of human miscreants) decided he could cut branches off my trees and dig up plants hanging over my backyard fence. He believed in his tiny brain that he had a property right to do so. Behind my house we have a large public alley, basically a road. He lives across the road and he and his dad clean all organic matter out of their gravel with a tweezer. Of course, my yard is an affront to their sterile GRAVEL-WORLD. After he cut branches the first time, I got him to agree to not do it again without my permission. Of course, he couldn't help himself, because the voices in his head kept telling him to cut. That's when the police told him to stop or they'd arrest him. They told him what he thought was his right was only in his imagination, not actual law. After I worked for several years to get chicanes (2 half traffic circles) installed on our street to slow traffic, I was labeled a property rights thief by a psychotic neighbor. She convinced the neighborhood drunk and others that I had violated his property rights. Even though most neighbors liked having the chicane, the evil-doers (Rumsfeld would have called them "a group of dead-enders")vandalaized the chicanes, my property, and even took the lug nuts off one of my car wheels (under cover of darkness). Anyhow, I lived here in a hostile environment for about 4 years. yes, that's how long the anti-chicane activists persisted. Their evilness and inability to get their way ate away at them and they all moved away. It's now really quiet and nice here. So, this cherry thing is small potatoes. A couple days after this cherry incident, a man was killed in an altercation around his caring for plants in a traffic circle.