Just cut off the top now. Train one of the shoots into a new leader.

Here is what I'd do, cut the dead part off about 1/2" above the highest live shoot.

I'd leave all the growth on this summer and possibly next to feed the root system, but if you want, you can pick the strongest shoot and gently stake it straight to encourage a single leader, since you won't want the trunk to be pernmanently split or forked that low on the tree.

Then in a couple years you can start removing the other shoots and let that new leader become the new trunk, producing its own side branches farther up.

Also, be sure to give it a good deep watering probably a couple times a week if it's not raining, but not so much that it's sitting in mud (if it is, back off on the watering). The frequency depends largely on how hot it is. If it's 90+ it will dry out fairly fast, if it's in the 70s or 80s, not so fast.

Do you know if it was planted "right" or not? In other words, did they just plop it in the ground, or were roots untangled, cut, etc to help a potentially rootbound situation?

This post was edited by hairmetal4ever on Wed, Jun 11, 14 at 8:39

I'm confused...the picture from a few weeks ago showed a tree in ground but this one shows it in a pot...yet you had said it was planted before leaves sprouted...???

Hairmetal4ever... I was told it was planted correctly. I can only say "I was told" because my husband and in-laws did it as a "surprise" for me when I was out of town (they knew I had been wanting to plant a tree there). Yes the tree was in the ground. We replaced it with another tree and so dug this one out of the ground and it came out easily just the same as it went in, and we just set it in the pot that the replacement tree came in. It was in the ground about 3 weeks. When it was bought and planted there were no leaves on it at all.