I'm hoping you all might have some insights for me on this. I am attempting to train a young sweet tart I got a few months back so it stays reasonably compact, following the pruning strategy described in the video "How to prune - Canopy management for mango" (
https://youtu.be/zh1AnvNa6mc?t=520).
I already did the heading cut at about hip height, it produced five new branches, and those new branches are starting to form their first nodes; so I am now planning the next pruning step. The video says to choose "3 or 4" branches using two criteria: 1) health and strength of the new shoots, and 2) that they are evenly spaced around the trunk (i.e. if looking from the top: equal triangles for 3 branches or right angles for 4 branches).
The thing is, the new branches that grew on this tree after the heading cut are now extremely lopsided, with 3 very strong branches right next to each other on one side of the tree and 2 puny ones growing out from the opposite side. So my problem is if I choose more than 2 branches evenly spaced, at least one branch will be really weak. I do see that 2 of the strongest branches are pretty much straight across from each other on the trunk, but is there some reason the video doesn't mention choosing only 2? It should be ok to just go with those 2 branches and remove the rest, right?