Please explain and describe "pugging." On which fruit trees is it practiced?
Two types of pugging. One on a new from the nursery tree in a pot. Other is on a mango tree that you planted and has been growing for a while, which lets put aside for now. If I have to pug it is usually at 3ft high. I prefer not to pug. I prefer to let the tree grow and branch out naturally. But in the real world many of the mango saplings you buy are too tall and spindly looking and not enough branching out.
Now I can be all wet here but.....If I buy a spindly mango I feel compelled to decapitate it (pug it) at about 30-36 inches high from the soil level (not from the bottom of the grow pot) to get it to branch out and assume the classical shape for a fruit tree. More wide and low, not a spindly beanstalk.
The mango trees you buy might be too tall and spindly because at the nursery they have been bunched together with the edges of grow pots touching. So the young mango (or other fruit tree) invests resources in climbing unnaturally high and skinny because it is seeking sunlight this way. Because being shaded too much by the other young mangoes it feels sunlight deprived. So up and upward it grows instead of growing outward via branching. Why would it send out more nice branches if they are going to end up shaded by the other mango saplings?
Like I said...this is my theory
Now pugglver is a woman on gardenWeb (with pug dogs) who did lots of drastic pugging to her planted mangoes at different heights. 20" might be her usual. She did it due to freezes. She lives a bit north in Florida where (IRRC) mango trees used to flourish but now has more cold winter weather in recent years. Her mango tree leaves and branches would be killed by the cold and she posted photos of this. She would pug these trees with nice thick 3-4" diameter trunks, this way she got rid of the dead wood. The tree would bounce back due to the extensive root system and the nice thick trunk. She would post these photos too.
I once pugged (at 20 inches) a planted Fairchild mango tree that had been planted for 18-24 months. It was growing way too skinny mostly because it was like that when I bought it. I should have pugged it before planting but..... Anyways I pugged it last April and got great results. `
Here are pugged Fairchild photos from two days ago. Yardstick is there to gauge the height. A wooden stick is pushing upward a branch that was growing too outward
Below you can see where it was pugged. It now has 6 very nice branches coming out. Not all 6 are visible