Hello, William. If you can tell the flower buds from the leaf buds, you can try but it would be an experiment. I tried something similar many years ago (on selected branches) after a different problem and saw no improvement (ie, no additional leaf out) in that year. I noticed additional leaf out in later years though.

So I guess I am saying that you m a y not get "more leaf out now" by doing that (that is, if you expect to increase from 25% to a much larger percent). But you can try.

I took pictures before doing that to selected branches (in order to tell if there was improvement); you may want to take pics too so you can compare a branch or area to itself in 3-4 months.