Think about it more in terms of maintaining rather than altering. While pruning is useful occasionally, most of the time you can use training as a healthier and more efficient alternative. Training has not been around for very long. Through tying down branches or propping them up from the ground, one can direct the growth of the tree to take whatever shape they want. If you do things correctly, you can get rid of all the pests and not infect the actual tree. If you re going to be spraying chemicals, you most likely will be using either a handheld pump or a hose-end sprayer. If you re using the pump sprayers, you will be able to more accurately determine the mixing of the chemicals. They seem to attract more unwanted creatures than any other plant in the world. Almost every day it seems like there is a new type of pestilence swarming the tree, trying to get a nibble of its delicious fruits. I can t say I blame them, but if they want to eat delicious fruits then they should grow their own trees. I once had a friend who was dealing with a very bad moth infestation. He couldn t find a single fruit on his tree that didn t have a worm inside of it. He ended up having to cut down the entire tree (the stump was a wriggling mass of white larvae. I threw up when I saw it. Damn my weak stomach!) and have the stump professionally removed to get rid of all traces. So once the fruit starts to grow, you should always pick some of them before they are completely ready. Even if you don't want to pick the fruit before it is ready, it will be beneficial to your tree. While you should do this to prevent it from becoming too heavy, you should also never over-harvest. This can be equally damaging. This is because if you cut the straight line, the tree will end up rolling to one side or the other. If you cut in a V , the tree will be able to fall in the exact direction that you want it to fall. Occasionally it might be a few feet off due to human error during the cutting process, but if you have some strong friends pull on the ropes you tied, you can line it back up with the path you wanted it to take.