I planted this tree about 6 months ago into the ground, I got a reduced price since it had some damage to trunk about 3 feet off the ground. It has been slowly healing over, if I leave it alone in a year or so it should be healed up. It has replaced most of its leaves since planting and actively growing from the tips. It has been blooming almost continuously but not setting fruit yet.
  I am more concerned about the leggy growth habit. I am wondering if the tree will put out vigorous growth if it is cut back severely. I tipped the growth at the top of the tree hoping to get more branching but nothing happened in over a month so I just took off about 3 feet from the top before taking this picture. It seems like there are no visible buds on older wood and I am afraid to hack away at existing branches unless I am told it will be ok. Was thinking about cutting most of the branches back about halfway or more, hoping to get more branching to fill the empty spaces, but after no regrowth from tipping the top, am now unsure.
 Would I be better off just cutting back the main trunk to below the damaged area at around 3 foot height? If it is better than having a top heavy tree in the future I am patient enough to amputate the top half of the tree....
Tree is now about 9 feet tall.

I bought 2 avocados at one of the Cape Coral Florida stores on Dec23. They were labeled as Brooks slimcados with 4223 stickers but fruit was green and had right shape and size for Oro Negro. Sure enough they ripened black after a few days. I ate one this morning and it had the same buttery great taste. A very pleasant surprise. Worth a look at Florida Wal-Marts for a little while....

 I was looking through articles online about avocado breeding and came across a few facts that gave me hope. Some fruits,like apples,might need over 10000 to possibly 50000 seeds to be planted to get a superior new variety,and the vast majority would be barely edible.
   Avocados and mangoes would seem to give a decent chance to at least get edible fruit from a seedling. Hass was selected from one of 300 seedlings when I looked up the history of avocado breeding. In one trial, seedling progeny of Hass gave something like 14 out of 400 seedlings with promise,and one line of these gave almost 25 percent promising seedlings,according to a plant geneticist named B.O. Bergh.
 I guess planting out Hass seedlings even in Florida might have a chance,if you planted enough.  If you planted out several hundred,maybe one or two would survive the climate and thrive?
  Last year during avocado season I bought about 150 local South-West Florida avocados to eat, mostly from the Painters on Pine Island from about Aug. to Feb. I saved every seed,bagging the saved seeds once a week in moist peat moss in a warm place until they began to germinate. I randomly set them out in a bed near my house about 6 by 10 feet to see what happened. The bed is in a very wet spot that gets lots of run off from my roof. A lot of them sprouted and then died of root rot.I also watered a lot from my highly saline well that causes salt injury to most avocados and mangoes.Some had bad leaf tip burn and died. Others grew fine but had small leaves. I finally picked the one best seedling and carefully dug and transplanted it out. It has leaves up to 10 1/2 inches long and about 3 inches wide, much larger than any of the others. It looks like it will be a strong tree with excellent foliage,new growth is very red,it has 2 side branches already at less than 3 feet tall. It may never produce fruit better than any of its possible parents, but at worst I will top work it in a few years if the fruit disappoints. It was from a fairly small seeded variety with a pointed seed. I remember buying Day,Catalina,Loretta(Haven't heard anything else about it in Florida but it was very good fruit), Tonnage, Ettinger (also a very good fruit that I haven't heard any other reports about in Florida) , Lula, and several others last year, All were pretty good, but I think these were the only possible parents with pointed seeds if I remember correctly.I didn't pick the fruit so I don't know what the leaves on the possible parent trees looked like. It was fun experimenting and now with only a little effort and space, I have a promising one out of 150 seedling that hasn't fruited yet but gives me hope.... If everyone with a little space tried this with avocados and mangos, in a decade we would have mangos and avocados covering the whole year in SW Florida.