Hey everyone, I brought an an acacia tree from a bonsai nursery December last year. I was attracted to the shape and curvature of the main trunk.

I put it in a bigger pot and have been fertilizing it quite a lot since I brought it. I thought I would have to wait years to see some decent growth, but the tree has really surprised me with the amount of leaf growth and trunk thickening. The tree is now one of my favorite possessions and Im really looking forward to seeing it as a bonsai.

In the winter im going to cut back the secondary branches and start working on some branch ramification as well as cut back the tap root.

Here's some pictures of the trees progression, the first few are from when I first got it, and the last two are present pictures.

That tree is coming along nicely. Are you going to thin the foliage?
I'd love to know your future plans for this tree. It does have potential

The foliage falls off in winter, and each set of leaves grow on its own stem, so its kind o hard. But what I have noticed is that when I fertilize the tree, the leaves can be up to 3 times bigger than normal! So went I have the trunk and branches the shape i want them i will stop fertilizing. But as for now there's no real point in thinning the foliage.

If you look at the initial photo's from when I first got the tree, you can see the main branch structure; I was planning on wiring the branches down to give a more mature look but the weight of the foliage has done that for me .

My future plan is to keep the same original branch structure but each main branch having a few flat foliage pads. Im open to opinions and help tho

great tree .my opinion would be to cut the braches down to 2 or 3 offshoots and then let it grow out again this would give the branches more taper and increase the look of age.

Tnx manofthetrees, thats a pretty good idea, maybe I will work on that next year, but this year im mainly just working on thickening up the main trunk. At the rate of growth the trunk will soon be double the thickness from when i brought it, its pretty unbelievable

Update on the acacia: I repotted it in early spring and its busy pushing out its new leaves now. I think by now the trunk has more than doubled in under a year. My plans for this tree is to fertilize it like mad for another year and let it push out as much growth as possible, I will keep defoliating the top, so that the top branches don't get too thick. In a years time i think I will cut the tree back hard so that I can get more taper like manofthetrees said. I will also then focus on shortening the internode length and the monsterous leave size by using a low nitrogen feed over long intervals. Im really happy with this tree, its progressing really well. I may chop all the branches except the top ones and work on a savanah/pierneef style tree. Some of the bark that was under the soil level rotted a bit and left an ugly look to the base, hopefully this will go away over time.

That is some growth you got! Do you know what it's roots look like? I have a Acacia burkei that I wired recently, and boy was that a painful experience.

Yeah the roots are very evenly spread and all come from the same level on the base, makes me think it may have come from an air layer. There were a few roots that were thinker than the others, but I just just made sure to prune those ones harder, hopefully I will get a nice nebari as a result

Good to see how well it's responding!

Nice looking tree, anyone know the what species this sort of Acacia is? I want to start one