Thickening trunks

Hi everybody

I have an acer palmatum and orange dream acer, young plants, not bonsai by any means but hopefully in a few years will be! They're in tiny little pots and I'm planting them into larger pots (just slip potting, minimal root disturbance). I can't put them in the ground unfortunately. I have heard conflicting views on how to most efficiently speed their growth. I've heard people overfeed, plant in inorganic substrate, pinch growth etc. To me I'd have just kept them in larger pots and watered/fed as usual but I'm intrigued by peoples methods of increasing growth. Any opinions? Thanks

I've heard people overfeed, plant in inorganic substrate, pinch growth etc. To me I'd have just kept them in larger pots and watered/fed as usual but I'm intrigued by peoples methods of increasing growth. Any opinions?

Larger pots (but not too much larger!) are certainly the primary means of fattening trunks. The substrate material will have little effect (that I can think of). Giving them ample feed and continuous pinching and pruning the promote the growth of new buds and branches also will help. But it is TIME that gives you good trunks. Shortcuts in bonsai usually/often lead to disaster.

The feeding and pruning will help your trunk, but they also are likely to delay the development of good bonsai, because you are as likely as not to have to remove all or most of the branches when the trunk gets where you want it.

To be honest I was just gonna let them grow with regular watering and feeding til I started reading what others have done. They're in pots probably 3-4 times the volume of the original tiny pots where they were very rootbound. Wasn't gonna prune as I thought more foliage would mean bigger trunk?

It also would result in a tall, spindly tree with very large spaces between branches and subbranches.

Good point, thank you very much! At what size would you pinch and prune? I'll see if i can attach pics but not sure if it will work lol. The pics are the acers in their old small pots

This is the acer pal








And this is the orange dream

Those are pre-repot, I assume.

Yes lol those are the tiny pots. Theyre in larger ones now.