posted 2 years ago
Yep. This is a great opportunity to rehabilitate the tree, which already has a nice grunty root system and will recover quickly from radical pruning. Decapitate that "mop top" and start over with an eye to structure. Lop it now at about waist height and let it put out a bunch of suckers. They will grow like mad over the coming months and you can just stand back and let them form a big green ball. Then, next winter, go in and thin that mess, leaving a handful of branches that will become the scaffold of the new tree. You might end up with 6-8 stems, and these can be stubbed back to about 50-80 cm so they don't present too much of a profile to the wind.
The following growing season you can be more hands-on. Encourage lateral branching with wide angles, good horizontal spread, and try to get some growth in all sectors of the developing crown without crossing or crowding. Keep the vertical growth to a minimum, pinching out or breaking off suckers while they are still soft.
By the third year, you should be rewarded with a decent flowering and fruit set, far beyond where you would be three years on from planting a new tree. At this point it's just standard maintenance and enjoying the apples.