Another approach is to leave much more of the tree and remove all the vigorous branches high in the tree and by pinching back other branches during growing season you can favor your permanent scaffolds.

I'm not sure if your FK pluot will develop adequate secondary or auxillary branches with their length and excessive diameter. I've no experience training pluots but those branches are oversized in ratio to the trunk which will tend in itself to stop interior buds from growing.

Although it would have hurt I'd have cut them to stubs and left much more leader.

I'd be interested to see how they develop in their current form. There's quite a few ways to skin a cat and they're all wrong.

I should have mentioned that another approach would be to cut the FK pluot branches about half way back now that they're growing which may encourage even auxillary buds far behind the cut to grow. Then during growing season you'd pinch back all but the straightest growing bud immediately behind the stub cut. Note I said pinch back and not pinch off.

Thank you for the valuable feed back harvestman. I'll go ahead and cut the FK branches halfway back.

And for pinching back, does that mean I should let the other buds say, get 5-6 inches long then clip it so that they branch? Does the term pinch back mean to cut the growth back, thus encouraging branching below the cut?

nguyena1 harvestman is the expert but I think I can explain what he is trying to say. He means to cut back the remaining existing scaffold branches to an outward facing bud. This slows down how fast the scaffold is growing at the point of attachment just a little. It will also likely encourage the tree to both produce new scaffolds and increase the branching on the existing scaffolds. The tree should also put more energy into growing the outward facing bud you cut back too.

Here is a video that shows what harvestman is talking about.

Here is a link that might be useful: Bright Neighbor Fruit And Nut Tree Pruning Training Video

That guy kind of looks and delivers like John Malkovich. Minus the Malkovich accent.

Okay so I will cut back the scaffolding limbs with a lower bud at the tip.

But I am still a tad unclear about
"during growing season you'd pinch back all but the straightest growing bud immediately behind the stub cut. Note I said pinch back and not pinch off."

1. Flavor King: After cutting my scaffold limbs half way, shouldn't I just let all the new branches and leaves growing from the buds far away from the stub cut go wild this first year to really help have a lot of leaves to get energy to establish a root system? I was thinking about doing that, then cutting them all off except main scaffolds 9 months from now in the winter.

2. Flavor King: Leaves are coming out of the buds already, is it too late to cut if half way along the scaffolding branches?

3. On the last picture, the semi dwarf elberta, I see buds that I didn't notice on the main trunk starting to put out some green lower then the lowest current branch. Can I go ahead and cut off the top to the 2 feet mark leaving these 4 nubs left or is that gambling too much and I should wait and see what the 4 green nubs do. Is it too late since buds have growth growing out? Texas A&M and other youtube videos make their cuts at around 2 feet.

Below: Picture of the green nubs on the elberta

{{gwi:60647}}Peach: Elberta

If other newbies are reading this thread, I found this video to be quite educational. There are plenty of videos on youtube but this one covers 0-5 years of pruning in depth and in 1 video.

The only thing I wish it covered more visually was how to identify water shoots that you want to cut out and showing which ideal fruiting wood is best to leave on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvH5PS5ILnc&feature=related

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/extension/peach/peach.html

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvH5PS5ILnc&feature=related

nguyena1 to be sure harvestman would have to answer some of those questions. However I think he meant cutting them back to an outward growing bud as apposed to cutting off the whole scaffold flush to the main stem.

Seeing those buds breaking on the main stem is a good sign. Its a good bet that if you cut them down to 24" they would form your new scaffolds. As harvestman said "There is more than one way to skin a cat." which means there is more than one way of doing things. Sometimes it makes little difference which route you take as more than one road can get you to your desired destination.

Your trees are recently planted so it scares me a little to do such heavy pruning when they are no longer dormant. They look healthy though so its kind of a judgment call.

You can pinch the existing main scaffolds back to an outward facing bud and allow the tree to grow those new scaffolds. Then you can chose which ones to keep some time later. Or you can top them at 24" and let those buds grow out some new scaffolds. I don't think there really is a perfectly right answer. There are minor reasons for choosing one over the other and the other way around. Kind of a "Six of these or a half dozen of the other." kind of thing. Whatever you choose to do should be done very soon though as your tree waking up fast.

When you stub branches or shoots just as a tree starts growing buds further behind the cut are more likely to grow. It has to do with the release of auxins by dominant buds on a shoot or branches tip and I guess when the shoot is in active growth buds further back get a chance to get started before the new dominant buds at the tip can begin to make those growth stopping auxins.

I actually meant that if you are attentive you can use the less straight shoots immediately behind the cut to be auxillaries, in addition to less vigorous buds further back, if you pinch them back several times during the growing season to assure the leader dominates.

http://www.goodfruit.com/Search/index.php?urlprefix=%2F&search=&mod=CoreSearch&query=Bas+van+den+Ende&Search=Search

Bas van den Ende is my pruning guru so those of you who want more detailed info can find it in some of these articles.

It's easier to make pruning decisions when you have some handle on the why. Your tree will never look like the one on the video.

Most stone fruit can easily take pruning during the early part of the growing season- the danger is not about survival but reducing annual growth.

GoodFruit Articles

These are some good reading, thanks HM. I particularly learned from #s 5, 6 and 7.