Sweet Acacia

[Mimstrel]

Can anyone give me a good resource or two with guidelines on when to work on a sweet acacia? I just purchased this one, so I’m not going to do anything to it for a while, but I want to be prepared and I’m finding a lot of „this is what I did to my tree“ and not so much „this season is good for this kind of work“ or „these conditions are good for this kind of work.“

 

[Forsoothe!]

They are leggy and hard to keep within a profile. I clip the primaries continuously. The skinny twigs don't live long and need a lot of light. They have thin leaves and almost anything sprayed on them will result in defoliation. They look nasty all winter. They use a lot of water.

 

[Mimstrel]

They are leggy and hard to keep within a profile. I clip the primaries continuously. The skinny twigs don't live long and need a lot of light. They have thin leaves and almost anything sprayed on them will result in defoliation. They look nasty all winter. They use a lot of water.

so... you're saying this is your favorite species and you never have any issues with it ever, it's the best?

I will say, I expected it to have a lot of defoliation after shipping, and other than a few leaflets, it didn't really have any to speak of. Thus far I've been pleased with it; we'll see how it goes over time.

 

[penumbra]

One of my favorite tropical bonsai.
I have had zero problems with mine and it is sprayed with systemic insecticide and fungicide, not because it needs it but because many plants around it do. I also foliar feed mine. No problems except when it dried out. I thought it was dead but it came back with a vengeance back budding really well.
I also have several seedlings that are growing like weeds.

 

[Mimstrel]

One of my favorite tropical bonsai.
I have had zero problems with mine and it is sprayed with systemic insecticide and fungicide, not because it needs it but because many plants around it do. I also foliar feed mine. No problems except when it dried out. I thought it was dead but it came back with a vengeance back budding really well.
I also have several seedlings that are growing like weeds.

Do you do rootwork or prune (major pruning) at any particular season?

 

[penumbra]

Do you do rootwork or prune (major pruning) at any particular season?

Rootwork was spring and cutback was late June.

 

[Forsoothe!]

so... you're saying this is your favorite species and you never have any issues with it ever, it's the best?

I will say, I expected it to have a lot of defoliation after shipping, and other than a few leaflets, it didn't really have any to speak of. Thus far I've been pleased with it; we'll see how it goes over time.

It was one of my first trees, I brought it back from FL in 2000. It's striking to me close up but has never gained much attention at shows, so what's that say about my tastes?

 

[Mimstrel]

Well, showing is always a little different from real life.
My philosophy, which applies to bonsai as well as a number of other pursuits, is "Learn the rules so that you can break them with purpose." It's something I was taught in a poetry lesson sometime back in school, and it comes to mind every time I see someone post "Is this a bonsai?" or when someone declares that they don't care what anyone says, their plant is "a bonsai." The first group (who ask "is this a bonsai?") are still trying to figure out which rules are integral to the process and outcome of bonsai, vs. which ones can be bent or broken. The second group have decided that the rules don't matter, they like the idea of "a bonsai" and it makes them happy to think they have "a bonsai."

In real life, you learn the rules and then you learn to break them, and along the way, you learn what processes and outcomes you love and which ones you don't (and which of the ones you don't love, you have to do anyway).

In showing, there is an additional set of rules to learn, because to be successful, you have to create the things that other people love. I don't love competing in general; it is sometimes interesting to test something I have created or a skill that I have learned against others, but it isn't important to me. For other people, shows are important and that's cool too.

Which is to say, in my opinion, all that the lack of show attention says about your tastes is that you like some trees that have not, thus far, gained much attention at shows.

 

[Forsoothe!]

I am an old gardener and bonsai was an evolutionary eventuality. When you fill up one city lot's worth of space, a potted garden of one kind or another naturally follows. In landscape gardening you keep the place looking nice by maintaining what is, and the concept of stumping a tree and then having to look at it in that state for years so that someday it would look acceptable, -that's an alien thought. That's an open sore. Hence, my trees are nurtured from day one to look good as soon as possible as opposed to going through some drastic change in form.

The other half of the equation is the standards of what are the definitions of what is most desirable and less desirable are different in bonsai and that is a reflection of Japanese verses western tastes. The people who strive to make Japanese bonsai like different things than the people who prefer Chinese penjing or gardening. To each their own. I like trees that look like trees in the landscape....

Your tree has a more exotic form, and with some foliage to accentuate the layers becomes a tree...