I was recently given an avocado tree that is a 5 ft tall stalk. It is in a pot indoors. I would like to trim it to encourage bushiness.
How much should I trim off? The top five leaves? The top three?
Should I cut right above a leaf? Right below? In between two leaves?
Can I trim it now, or should I wait until spring/summer?
On the long thin branch (the lower part where there are no leaves), there are also little sprouts going
Maybe I could try cutting above one of these?
Wow, so tall and still such a thin trunk. My avocado seedlings look very different to my commercial avocado that I hope to get cuttings from so I can turn my seedlings into viable fruit trees. The reason I say this is I have about 50 seedlings and they all look like your plant, but have thicker trunks and very different to the commercial one that I have that is shorter than yours but with many developing branches and very different leaves. Your pot is tiny and the tap root most likely badly curled up, maybe that is why your trunk is so thin and it is so tall without branches, I have heard that it is extremely rare to get a good avocado fruit from a seedling, so you are most likely going to have to graft if you want decent fruit. But graft to what? The trunk is so thin. I'm not sure if your tree is worth trying to save you are going to need a huge mound to plant into going forward in my opinion, but I'm no expert, so please just take this as speculation