A newbie here who's a little worried about two mature orange trees that I have in my backyard. My husband and his grandma decided to prune them about a month ago -- but after doing some more research, I'm concerned that they may have been overpruned or pruned incorrectly. I'm hoping someone might have some advice.

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This is the tree that was most severely pruned -- it was producing sour fruit before and had some dead upper branches:

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* It has been growing a lot of green leafy stems + some flowers. I removed the ones near the base of the trunk below what looked like the graft line - do I need to remove any of the ones growing along the upper branches? Do I need to do anything to protect the fresh openings after these stems are snapped off?

* Is it natural for the base to look so knotty -- or is this a sign of something unhealthy going on?

* I saw quite a few earwigs this morning near the base of the tree when I was pulling off those stems, they crawled back into the soil when revealed -- is this something I should be concerned about? Is it possible that they're damaging the roots of the tree or do you think they were just feeding on the lower sucker stems that I just pulled?

* The openings where the branches were cut look like they're getting covered in some sort of mold. Is this really bad? Can I still fix this at this point?

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This is the second tree:

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This one was not as severely pruned, but I'm concerned because I've been seeing a lot of the new growth yellowing and falling off pretty quickly. It was producing pretty well before the pruning. Do you think it just needs water and fertilizer or is it possible something else might be going on?

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I'm getting ready to fertilize these trees (EB Stone Citrus Fertillizer). Is there some additional care that I can provide to help these trees along?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks.