Three tree Acacia galpinni progression.

The oldest pics October 2011:



The grouping today:



Any comments or advice will be appreciated.

Lennard

Very nice, Lennard....thanks for sharing the progress.  I have never worked with the species but I really like the foliage. 
Tom

Tom Simonyi wrote:Very nice, Lennard....thanks for sharing the progress.  I have never worked with the species but I really like the foliage. 
Tom

Thanks for the reply.

Acacia galpinni becomes very big trees where I live and they don't have the typical shape of other Acacias(Flat top or open umbrella). As far as I remember Charles Ceronio named the shape Bushveld style .

The crowns becomes much higher than they are wide - we have one here growing in town with a trunk diameter of over 1.5 m and the tree is about 35m high.

I know the new name is Senegalia galpinnii.....but it will take a while for me to get use to it!

Lennard

I just purchased my first Acacia and have been a little intimidated by it's fragility. Having seen your progression has given me much hope.
Very nice work and thanks for sharing.

Jane

Beautiful. My absolute favourite tree. Love it when the leaves go to sleep at night. Thanks for sharing Lennard. You made my day   

Beautiful, nice to see that someone is actually using this species. I love how they seem to naturally look like big bonsai in the wild, they're always so contorted and the bark is just aggressive and old looking even on younger trees. Good luck!

Very nice, Lennard!
Acacias in the wild are my favorite trees.

May I ask what is your soil mix? I think I can see in photos a greater % of organic or not?
What are your suggestions about first root reduction of a nursery tree to be put into a training pot?

Thank you in advance.

my nellie wrote:Very nice, Lennard!
Acacias in the wild are my favorite trees.

May I ask what is your soil mix? I think I can see in photos a greater % of organic or not?
What are your suggestions about first root reduction of a nursery tree to be put into a training pot?

Thank you in advance.

Thanks for the kind words, Jane Thomas and Fredman.

Nellie, with my conditions I use a very organic soil mix: one third good garden loam, one third grit and one third unsifted home made compost. I am going to change my mix using two thirds washed river sand(particle size 1mm - 4mm mixed) and one third unsifted compost. My biggest enemy with this mix is earthworms/redworms - they can change a mix like this into a clay-like medium within one growing season!

In addition I do mulch all my trees with home made compost a few times during the growing season - doing that I don't have to fertilize a lot. I use chicken manure pellets three times during the growing season.

Acacia galpinnii takes repotting very well. I have dug one from the garden in mid summer and bare rooted it - it survived.

With my developed trees, I always leave a root ball the first time I pot it up. From there I would either remove the lower or the upper half of the growing medium every alternate repotting. I know I am playing it too safe!

Thanks all for the positive replies.

Lennard

Lennard, thank you for the detailed answer.
I play on the safe side, too.

Nice forest Lennard...I shall try some of mine in this style too.
Can you elaborate a bit more on this style? How are the branches and the crown formed? You know me by now...I need to understand...he he he.