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The Garden 2026-1 - HSC Mountaintop Mint
Lamp
2900K
DIY
Lamp
3394K
---
Tent
4x4
AC Shitfinity
Tent
10x10
AC Shitfinity
Vermiculite
Substrate
Indoor
Room Type
4 liters
Pot Size
Start at 2 Week
G
Germination21d ago
00110001001001111O It's growing season, again...
Preliminary work:
-Cleaning pots, reservoir, drain table, irrigation tubing, hoses, et al...
-Combining a compressed 3.8 cu ft bale of Pro-Mix HP with 4 cuft of vermiculite and seperating into 2 batches for each grow cycle. This will equate to rouglhy 11 cu ft.
-Setting up a 4x4 - lights, drain table, circulation fan, heating mat for seedlings, et al...
-Set up humidifier
After that's all done, we'll get some seeds wet in a couple days. Germination week is usually boring and useless, so I'm going to include the preparation. The real work will be 30 days from now when I setup the 10x10 tent.
x6 Mountaintop Mint
x5 Animal Mints
x5 Kush Mints
The eight strongest plants will remain.
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"The Garden 2026-1" will have 3 diaries to start. Depending on outcomes there will be some fem-breeding diaries involving these three strains to follow.
"The Garden 2026-2" will start up in December with diaries for HSC Vanilla cream pie, MSNL Blue Cookies, and MSNL Pineapple Express. This too should result in a fem-breeding diary depending on outcomes.
Would really like to find 2+ strong mint/pine flavors to breed. With fewer strains I can take more cuttings of different plants and hedge my bets for which ones turn out the best. Because of time-constraints of 2 cycles before the heat and humidity comes in, I don't get that luxury to wait and see. So, I'll just breed extra plants and weed out any weak parents later on in the process.
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This year's wrinkles, goals, or reversions etc...
-I now have a 0-12-26 and a 5-12-26 "Part A" fertilizer. This will allow me to keep Ca levels consistent throughout the grow while reducing nitrogen levels in flower. The fertilizer formula is in the pictures above.
-I'm dropping the triple superphosphate, because it seems like a lot of extra effort and no discernable return. I've used it the last couple years, and a while back I used it for another year or 2, so at this point I feel confident it's not doing much.
-Overall, very little will change in regard to fertilization levels compared to past years.
-I might try to go with 12 colas per plant instead of 8 colas. Still flip-flopping on that. Sixty-four colas is not enough for the size of the area. In order to keep symmetrical growth, that means jumping to 12 colas per plant. Yield was fine in 2025-2, but probably left a little on the table.
-Light footprint is slightly slimmed down to 34-35sq ft as it was in 2025-2. Flower tent is down to 1102 watts. The freed up 226w DIY light will be for the breeding cycles. Think I've got everything in harmony at this point.
-Some minor adjustments to setup that nobody cares about, but will allow for easier access or otherwise greater convenience for me.
Bwahah had the wrong humboldt logo... fixed.
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Used method
Directly In Substrate
Germination Method
1
Week 1. Vegetation8d ago
16 hrs
Light Schedule
23 °C
Day Air Temp
6.0
pH
600 PPM
TDS
59 %
Air Humidity
21 °C
Night Air Temp
45.72 cm
Lamp Distance
00110001001001111O Total days above ground: 7 days with a -1.5 day window.
Overall, 100% germination and sprout. The MSNL look great. The HSC seeds have been a bit of a disappointment They were the slowest to sprout, overall. They also have the most abnormalities. This is not a damnation of an entire brand or strain. It is simply the observation of these 6 seeds sown. All other seeds (10 of 10) were faster, healthier, and more stable outcomes. 50% to 66% of the mountain top mint are either defective or have a potentially deleterious mutation.
Two had no growth tip, or barely developed at sprout. Six days on and I can see a nub in the 'macro' pictures. Either way, these will be too slow to keep up. Another is mutated beyond what I care to take a chance with, but we'll see how that plays out before the first pot-up. Two look good enough and another might be okay, but looks like the new set of leaves has an abormality.
No biggie. This is why i plant 2x of what I need, but I also expect the defects to be spread out more, lol. Sixteen whiddled to twelve at first pot-up, and only eight go into the final pots. I'll be flipping a coin on which ones don't make the final cut, but the first 4 trashed look pretty clear. Thankfully, I got these on a 420 BOGO sale, so the cost of failure is half.
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2
Week 2. Vegetation1d ago
16 hrs
Light Schedule
23 °C
Day Air Temp
6.0
pH
600 PPM
TDS
59 %
Air Humidity
21 °C
Night Air Temp
3.79 liters
Pot Size
48.26 cm
Lamp Distance
00110001001001111O Total days above ground - 14 days or less.
I really don't have anything good to say about this batch of 6 seeds from Humboldt Seed Co. Hopefully, the Vinalla Creme Pie performs better in round two than the mountain top mints in this grow cycle. These look to be too heavily inbred - just a guess. "Outcropping" plants have severe issues when inbred too much. If another strain has the same outcome, I probably won't buy their seeds again, or at minimum I know to plant all 10 to ensure I get 3-4 good plants, if there is a sale price good enough to warrant it. If i didn't get these for nearly 1/2 price, I might be upset about it.
Potted up after 11 days. I wanted to wait a bit longer, but the leaves were starting to encroach on each other under the smaller xs1500 LED and 1020 tray. Still had decent enough root development to hold the medium together.
As you can see, some severe transplant shock, lol... an urban myth relative to plants in a pot. The FC4800 is running on a 16/8 schedule at 75% and 18-19" above canopy.
So, as I approach potting up to final 5-gal pot (10 days or so), one more plant has to fall behind to make the decision easy - one of these MM is defnitely the weakest plant. Only eight will be flowered. I expect to throw out a couple strong plants in this process, but this time I needed the full 16 starts to ensure eight strong plants. That's the whole point to gaurantee at least eight strong plants. Throwing out a strong a plant or two is an acceptable cost for the sake of a consistent crop from seed.
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