By continuing to use the website or clicking Accept you consent to our cookies and personal data policy and confirm that you are at least 18 year old. For details please see Privacy Policy and Terms
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------
"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.
------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
1 like
comments
Share
Used method
Directly In Substrate
Germination Method
1
Week 1. Vegetation
2d ago
1/8
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.