Total days above ground: 63 Total flower nights: 24 Just beyond 3 weeks into flower and the plants are showing their potential. The Mountaintop Mint has made great strides but is still a lanky bitch. I had to HST every branch, and may need to bend a couple more down before vegetative growth abates. Not a fan of this growth pattern and still unhappy about 2 out of 9 seeds providing a viable outcome. The bright side is that yield should be fine given the plethora of bud sites. Despite being difficult to grow next to other plants, I feel much better about its prospective outcome than I did just 1 week ago. That whole "crazy shit can happen in flower" thing rings true, again. Overall the canopy has filled in nicely. I have a couple spots where light is wasted and I'll make some adjustments to the process to fix that for future grows. Now that I've settled on plant size and number of plants, improvements can be made each cycle until it's clockwork. I like the 12-cola vs 8 cola experiement. I've got a fairly long list of edits to make to various sections of my "bible," which means I liked the outcomes of most of my incremental adjustments. Continual, systematic improvement in action... One other incremental change on the docket but not yet realized will be dropping nutrient concnetration once vegetative growth ends. Exact timing will be based on what I see in the foliage. I see some minor tip curl and its a bit darker than I want. So, it may come sooner than later. This'll be something I tweak over the next few grow cycles until I'm happy with the late-flower health. I'll drop fertilizer concentration 10-15% on next refill and see how that plays out. It'll take a couple refills of reservoir to near 100% transition without draining it. If necessary, I'll drain and do a full refill for more pressing needs. A rez scrub before final stretch is coming, regardless. Side note: The impacts of VPD can be enormous. Last year (2025-2 diary) I had a humidifier wick get fouled and RH dropped while VPD spiked for more than a few days, thinking I could power through or that the canopy would soon provide more moisture. Nope, growth stalled in a significant way. By comparing day 34-42-49 of 2025-2 and day 38-42-49 of this diary, I can see a huge difference in growth at same point above ground. The consitency with which i do things makes it fairly certain it's the extende period with extremely high VPDs that caused the difference. Also, interesting that it mostly catches back up by completion of third week of flower. The size difference is nearly undone by this point, though 2025-2 took 4 days longer vege phase to get there. Even so, I still think this grow is more than 4 days ahead of 2025-2 (the difference in vegetative phae duration). Time will tell if the development is ahead of the pace in 2025-2 or whether it's simply mostly an offset due to a less efficient vege phase for 2025-2.