MATTPF You must be kidding to say my weather is warm. If my weather is warm why all the flowers on my 6 apricot trees froze and fell down. My dream is to taste just one apricot from my trees but the weather would not allow me. I was so frustrated and crazy I went out and spent 300.00 buying tree tarps and XMAS lights to be used next year freeze time. I did that to prevent myself of giving up hope for apricot

Some nurseries(Dave Wilson) and other growers say to cut the trunk off at about knee high,when planting a bare root fruit tree.This gives the roots better early development and allows a person to choose the scaffold height and arrangement somewhat. I just planted 10 bare root stone fruit trees and the branches came shortened,at about eight inches or less,for shipping purposes and the trees themselves were about five feet tall.I could have cut them down,but decided to use the short branches as the scaffolds and left about three to five on,pointing at different directions from each other.The tops were cut off the main trunk when needed,so that the highest branch was about a half inch from the top of the tree. The trees are growing fine and with this method,I might gain a little time for fruiting.In fact a few of the trees have one or two pieces. Trees can really be grown the way a person wants them,as far as height and shape goes.Personally,I'd grow an Apricot tree with an open center. Brady

Cutting it below any existing branches will most probably kill the tree. The pathogen is topical rather than systemic or internal, meaning that it spreads by spores that can overwinter on twigs and stems. That's why it it so important to treat at the appropriate time of year, as is pruning out affected stems and twigs at that time, and to practice good sanitation. Also make sure any sprinklers are not hitting the foliage. The disease is encouraged by damp spring weather and overhead irrigation. management of peach shothole

I will only tell you what we did with ours, here in Oklahoma. First of all the tree was overgrown... too tall for my liking since we have a very small back yard. I had read a book by Ann Ralph, "Grow a Little Fruit Tree". You can Google it if interested. She and several other Nursery people advocate summer pruning to control height. The idea is that if pruned at the summer solstice, about June 21, the tree has used up most of it's winter stores for strong growth. June is the time to prune for height and winter prune to take out all growth that is crowding the center. We now have a four year old peach that is 6' tall and loaded with fruit. It has 4 scaffold limbs that are maxed out at about knee height. If I were doing this again with a younger/smaller (5/8 caliper) tree I would take it down even lower so we could have more fruiting wood within that 6' to 7' height. Another thing to look at would be videos made by Dave Wilson Nursery on this subject. Google "backyard fruit". Hope this will give you some ideas to think about.