Mantis; about your question on trimming. The best advise I' ve been given on when to trim is " It doesn' t matter when you trim only how you trim" . Some nut trees will bleed badly if you trim them before they leaf out.

You can cut out the dead wood and that will give you a better picture of the remaining limbs. Then work on removing branches that are growing over each other. Just don' t remove more than about 10 -20% of the living wood in one year. The cuts should be clean and made to leave no stub.

Dan O.