I tried to post a picture but it didn't work. Let me try again.

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It's already over ten feet so I'm thinking that some drastic pruning of the top three big branches, if not eliminating them altogether by hacking the top just below the three. Then cut off some of the low, smaller branches IF they are not growing in a good direction. I'm not sure any of this is a good idea but I think it would force the rather nicely spaced scaffold branches below them to grow and you would have a more manageable tree, especially in the future. I hope the old pros here can give you some better advice. It seems to be happy with having grown that tall!

Herbert

Carrie:

Herbert gives you good advise if you want to keep the tree small. But be aware that if you cut out the big branches in the top, the tree will just try to regrow them this summer. That will require further pruning and delay fruit production.

The fastest way to get fruit with minimum pruning is to tie the big wood in the top over to about 30 degrees above horizontal. Then prune to keep the center open. But this approch may leave you with a taller tree than you like.

Pruning delays fruiting and leads to more pruning. Training the branches where you want them leads to fruiting and less pruning. That about sums up all the pruning/training advice you will learn from a book.

The Fruitnut

I spend a lot of enjoyable time down in my orchard training my trees into a shape that will get sun on them and make them accessable. I learned a lot with my older trees and have put the knowledge to work on my younger ones. I have learned to do it early so when they get big the pay-off is a tree that is productive and easy to care for. Train those limbs!

Thanks for the summation on pruning, Fruitnut. I do well with keeping the Basics in my head when I stand in front of my trees with pruner in hand.
Herbert

Thanks everyone for responding.
Fruitnut, thank you for confirming that I should bend the branches over at an angle by tyeing them down slightly to make a more open centre tree. I still feel a little confused about the maintenance pruning I will need to do in subsequent years but I will see what info I can find out. If anyone has any other suggestions on this...
The tree is about 8 feet tall already, even though it looks more like 10 feet in the picture because of the angle I took the picture from.

Carrie

Its normal to be somewhat confused.

I still find a lot of it confusing after a few years of daily reading and practice.

Part of the confusion is you got some good but conflicting advice.

Either course could be the best idea. One option you were given is to leave all the limbs but to tie down the upper ones to a lower angle. You'd do that if the most important thing to you is how soon you'll get fruit. That would be at the expense of having a tree that is taller, less attractive and less manageable.

The other option you were given is to top the tree lower and train it to more of a vase. That might delay fruiting a year or so but would make it easier for you to maintain the tree at the height you wanted and, in my opinion, make a more open, easier managed, attractive tree.

You'll have to decide which is more important to you.

If going only by the information in the intial post I'd say to chop it. But early fruiting may be important to you and you just didn't think to include that criteria.

In my case, I've been growing for 3-4 years. Most of my early decisions were to aim for fruit quickly, aesthetics and other considerations be damned.

Now that I'm starting to get fruit and have a number of trees, I have the luxury to step back and wish I had trees that were pruned and trained for the long term. (I still think early fruiting would probably win if I'd weighed my options from a more informed stance).

Its much easier to be patient with one tree if one has other trees that are bearing.

Thank you Murky for your tips. I think it might be too late to prune now as my tree is starting to bud. I am still not comfortable with the idea of hacking off the top of my tree where the three leaders meet, although having a better looking tree in the long run is most important to me and I am willing to forego fruit for a while. If I were to prune off all of the leaders later this summer or in late winter would I just cut the entire top of the tree off at a slight angle doing away with all of the leaders or do I prune each leader down to the branch collar? My intuition says that a stub would be left and that is not good so maybe I answered my own question.

Should I just leave the tree for this year?

Thanks!
Carrie

You'd decapitate the whole thing just above one of the limbs you are keeping.