I planted a 5-foot blue spruce in my Washington DC area yard last fall. It suffered in the winter, losing a lot of needles on the lower branches. I have been advised to try "tip pruning" to make the bottom fill back out. How would I do that successfully? Is it likely to work?
You shorten the new growth to control size, this has no bearing on your issue. And when you are trying to get more foliage you leave all of the existing foliage to make food that supports new growth - so cutting your tree back would actually be counterproductive.
