I had posted this 2 years ago, but can't seem to find the thread to update it, so I'll start over.

I have this old apple tree that was here when I bought the house. It was planted and forgotten by the prior owner. They had no idea what kind it was, but after this year, I think it's a Duchess. It has mostly greenish apples that get some red on the sun side. They are firm, slightly tart, and only produce every other year. They also last about 1 week in the fridge.

I have put some grafts on (about 12 overall) over the past 2 years. Some of the ones from this spring did pretty well, but have gotten buried inside the tree.

Pics below show the tree, and a few of the grafts.

So, I have a few questions:

- I am thinking of cutting off everything above about 12-14 feet. It is about 25 feet tall now. Is that too much?

- I am thinking of taking about 8 feet off all the way around to bring it back to a reasonable size.

- I thinking of removing every branch that shades a graft. As seen in the pics, I need to give some of these air and light. Is that OK?

- the plan is to add more grafts this spring also - maybe another 10-12.

- I am thinking of keeping about 40-50% of the native foliage this year, then remove some more next year. I figured I need some leaves on it to feed the grafts.

I wanted to see what the native apples were. Now that I know, I don't need many of them. They were tasty, and ready very early (August), but since they don't store, I don't need many hundreds of them.

Eventually, I would think I'd keep maybe 2-3 productive native branches, and everything else would be a graft.

So, is that too much trimming for one season?

I don't want to kill it, but I want to give the new grafts as much opportunity as possible to grow, and don't need as many of the natives.

Thanks much.

Tree:

Honeycrisp, current year. Needs more light and air:

Pink Lady, current year. Needs more light and air:

All the others are in between these two. The Pink Lady is more than 2 feet long, the Honeycrisp maybe 8 inches.

A couple of the natives, picked August 10: