I also intended to keep records of bud count and branching this year, but I guess I just got busy with other things... If you don't have time to average all the scapes, then my advice would be to take the average of a few scapes, or look to see if most of the scapes are similar, and just measure and count one of them that is "typical" for that plant. If most of your scapes have 2 way branching 8-9 buds, but a couple have more, I would say 2 way branching, 8-10 buds. It's a happy surprise when a plant performs better than expected, so err on the side of caution. If you were to report only the best scapes, then it's likely others may not get those results, and that can be disappointing.
