LST Evaluation

Long story short - Prune off growth directly pointing downward. Prune off the axillary growth at or below the bend. You want to form that bend as low as possible in the future, so it may have been a bit too late if the trunk is too rigid to do that, but it can still be effective. It may not make a difference if that lowest axillary growth would still be at or near bend and therefore pruned off - in which case no time or growth was wasted. Don't remove leaves unless they are pointing down into the dirt or touching the dirt. I would try to shape that bend a bit more. Bend in 2-3 spots close together can make it more horitzontal and take stress off the roots. The anchor at bottom of trunk is smart, keep doing that. You need to keep it tied down the entire grow going forward. The stem will seemingly get rigid, but it will always try to lurch upward even if it has a severe rigid bend. If you want to maintain a shape, it'll need to be restricted in one way or another. ------------ As long as it accomplishes what you want to do, you did it right. It's important to work backward from an end goal, then do what is necessary to reach that end goal for your canopy. Whimsically doing things with no target isn't optimal. As far as the mechanics of it -- maybe a bit too late on this one, if the trunk was too rigid at bottom to avoid damage. Anything below the bend will be trash, fyi, so it's best to do it as low on the plant as possible without damaging anything, of course. I can't tell if the lower trunk is maleable or not, but you want to form that bend as low as possible. Bend in 2-3 spots to get it horizontal. the anchor at the bottom in opposite direction is smart. Now, depending on your end goals, you may want to bend it down between the nodes or favoring 1 set of axillary growth. If you point alternating growth downward, prune that half off (at least where the plant will be held horizontally). If you bend it down between the nodes each set of axillary growth can grow unimpeded vertically. This sounds like it's an easy choice, but you often don't need so much axillary growth tightly packed together. Choose based on your end goal. You'll probably have to thin it out a bit either way. you bent it down with 1 node facing the ground vs 45degree split. Prune off anything pointing downward as it will always be weaker growth if it has to snake around the branch to go vertical. Even if you manage to get it level with the rest of the growth, it will be weaker buds. All this does is manipulate apical dominance. The highest node will take the most resources and grow the fastest. Their is hierarchy due to primary or secondary growth, too. things off the main trunk (apical meristem) will more likely be stronger than branching off a stem of equal height but not the main trunk. You can temporarily bend or tie something down to level out the growth as needed. Just bending talller growth once a day can level out small differences. larger deviations may require you to tie something down longer -- not for so long it gets rigid, of course. Training is simlpy the manipulation of apical dominance. Do whatever it takes to get the canopy you want.