Next weekend i'm planning to prune the large plum/damson tree in my back garden.

some of you may remember me askng questions last year as it suffered aphid leaf curl. well to be honest i thought the tree was dead over winter as the state of it last summer was very poor and the disease meant it didn't drop a number of leaves which shrivelled up and died. Anyway i took someones advice and sprayed with a systemic insecticide before bud break in january.

This did the job almost perfectly as only two small branches have suffered leaf curl this year and they look nowhere near as bad as year before, so thanks for the advice. After the problems i've had with it, especially it being the only mature plant/tree in my garden i'm gonna spray it every winter. would like to leave it, but due to the neglect its had over the years i don't think its worth the risk, as i don't want to lose it, especially as removing it would be near impossible and ruin the look of the garden

Anyway this year despite being a large tree it's only produced less than 10 fruits due to last years disease. But its put on huge amounts of growth, shocked at the length of some of the new branches. I'm guessing i must shorten these or they'll probably break next year with weight of fruit, any advice on how far to taking them back to the branch they grew from?

My plan is to remove all weak/small stems or branches; and also any crossing branches. I've also read its good to open up the canopy to let light in, but any other recommendations would be good as google searches just bring up pruning for new/fan/espailer trees