Has anyone pugged a lychee tree?

[chrobrego]

My two young lychee trees got torched during the recent Florida freezes. I have leave drop and some cracks in the bark. Has anyone pugged a small lychee tree and had it flush back out?  I've done this with mango with success and was wondering if it would work for lychee?

Thanks,

Shawn

[andrewq]

shawn, sorry to hear about the damage to your lychees. are you pugging to try to improve chance of recovery or because you want to alter the shape/canopy of the tree? my gut feeling from killing a bunch of lychees in the past is to not do anything and hope it comes back.


i know pugging has been mentioned in posts before, but i don't recall if anyone has actually done it before and reported back.

i've caused a number of lychees to defoliate to almost 100%. they always bounce back except when it happened in the late fall when the tree was going into dormancy.

i'll note that when they lost all their leaves, i don't recall them having growth below the first bifurcation. these were medium size trees, (trunk 2-3 cm diameter) though


edit: added photo of mauritius

[boxturtle]

I suggest waiting for it to warm up a bit and just prune off dead wood....if you want to pug it so it would come back all pretty again probably better off buying a new plant..... they recover super slow or even die  if you do anything too dramatic especially if its a young tree