I have a tough choice this spring. I have a fully grown blue spruce to
the south of
a fully grown pear tree. And it seems as though the blue spruce is
winning out over the competion for sunlight for the pear is beginning to
throw ugly limbs
in an unbalanced manner to get more sunlight.

Now I like the decorative looks of the blue spruce but I like more the
pears as
fruit food from the pear tree. I feel somewhat like a Buridan with his
donkey
deciding between 2 equally luscious bales of hay.

What I think I will do is make a compromise solution. I will cut off the
top 1/3 the of the blue spruce and let it grow back up and cut those
ugly unbalanced limbs of the pear. Favoring the pear with more sunlight
and forcing the blue spruce to fill out more of its bottom rather than
growing higher.

Can anyone testify as to whether trimming the tops of old blue spruce
makes the
tree a better tree?

Archimedes Plutonium,
whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots
of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

Can anyone testify as to whether trimming the tops of old blue spruce
makes the
tree a better tree?

Most horticulturists would say no. A spruce, like other needle-leaf conifers,
has a single "leader," which is that one vertical twig at the tippy-top. If it
is cut off, several things may happen:

1. The tree may stop growing altogether and eventually die.

2. one or more of the nearest side branches may become new leader(s), causing
a crooked (if one) or forked (if two or more) tree.

Why do you ask us questions which can be found on a simple web search, or in
easy-to-find books?

Jie-san Laushi

Huodau lau, xuedau lau, hai you sanfen xue bulai
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to email: eliminate redundancy