I had one of these in my front yard. In fact it was a selling point for me when we bought our house. It had never been trimmed or topped and the branches spread out sideways making it the best jungle gym ever for my kids. They grew up climbing that tree, playing in it and going for 'bronco' rides when the wind blew hard. We hung a number of tires and swings from that tree. It's abundant foliage shaded the entire front of the house and kept the house cool. It eventually developed a major crack in the trunk and it also began to lean. Surface roots cracked my porch too, so it had to go. Now it's a nice log to sit on and the stump has a small slab of marble on it by way of a table. I did notice that the house was MUCH hotter with the tree cut down. I have since planted two plane trees and a cal sycamore further away from the house with the idea of shading the yard and the asphalt of the street to make it much cooler. As nice as that mulberry was, the plane trees are much prettier and one is growing with a sort of 'spiral staircase' habit with the way the branches grow from a central leader. That one is going to be an epic climbing tree! I've tried a couple of watering schemes with them and they have always done well, but they look freshest and best with periodic flood irrigation. I have no lawn that requires frequent watering so these trees are rooting deeper. With the problems your tree already has, I would start over. I counted 22 rings on my mulberry after I cut it down. It got big fast, but it also developed major problems fast. I would do some home work to find a sturdier tree to replace it.

Could easily be a product of two years of drought. Either direct damage, or weakening/stressing the tree so that it starts to fall victim to something else.I Elm that I drive by on the way home I noticed a few days ago, is dying after surviving two horrendous years. Even if the weather is great for the next five years, there will continue to be casualties during that time due to the last two years. My "GUESS" on very limited info, is that it is the result of drought. Have the tree checked out by a PROFESSIONAL CERTIFIED Arborist if you want to keep it (what I would do), and that doesn't mean some Monkey with a chainsaw that claims to be a professional pruner etc. Anyway, you go, the tree needs treatment of some sort at best, and removal at worst. Arktrees

I would let it do it thing. It will branch when it is ready. When it is about 5 feet tall you will need to take a bud from the top and graft it to the bottom of the tree if you ever want fruit. wood maturity is messured by the tree as the number of leaves that bud is from the roots. At 5 feet you may have a leaf node count of 100.. the leaf node count will start at 100 even though the bud has been moved to the base of the tree.

As soon as I get a ladder over here (it might not go high enough) or a relative with the tractor with the front-end loader to boost me up there (or someone less inclined to vertigo), I will probably aim to measure the limb in key spots first, and mark it off with ribbon or something. I don't recall exactly what type of Oak it is now - there's several different types on the property, but knowing the type would I think help to discern the strength from whatever data is out there. I'm sure someone has tested this stuff! I can "easily" wait a year to actually suspend the swing after the limb has been drilled, bolts inserted, boo-boos treated, and testing/tightening as needed. I had the swing for at least a year before I got the idea to look for "just the right spot" WITH "just the right limb" - took me a year or more to find that (because I got hung up on "a perfect limb" that is on a great tree, but a completely lousy location to have a swing unless totally intended for aesthetics alone) and then more wandering around the spot to feel certain I had some idea of how I'd "work" the area/landscape it. There's underbrush and saplings to remove and I need to decide ahead of time if I should go ahead with a different type of fence to replace the field fence that is at the "back" of the area. (Eventually I want to replace the field fence on two sides with something sturdier and possibly more visually appealing, but that's like close to a thousand feet of fencing sooo....) It also gives me plenty of time to pressure-wash the swing, get it well dried, get it to soak up some Thompson's water-seal, possibly replace at least two known broken slats or just repair them with wood glue - who knows, maybe even paint it or "decorate" it - whatever. In summary, it won't kill me to wait a year or more longer. Now I just wish I had stepped up and asked about this earlier in the year - when I could have done the drilling before the "sap had started to flow". I wonder if TSC will have bolts long enough for this or if I'm going to have to go searching around one of these old-old tractor/hardware stores in the middle of nowhere. :)