Flower Day 1 Defoliation - Did I Do Well?

[echdk3]

Hi everyone! Today was day 1 of flowering for my first grow and I did what felt like a major defoliation. Here are the before and after pics of my two girls. Be honest, did I take off too much, not enough, or just the right amount? Any other comments? Look good, bad, or ugly? Thank you so much!

Girl Scout Cookies, Nirvana Seed Shop
Fox Farm Ocean Forest and Perlite
Fox Farm Dirty Dozen Nutes

[JohnEmad]

Looks like you did it right and not too much. Opened up bud sights and let air and light in to prepare for the stretch. Yup. looks good.
If they are anything like my plants you will see them looking just as bushy as before the defol in about 3 to 5 days. Nice level canopy.

[echdk3]

Thanks! Good to know.

[ChadWestport]

It looks like you did a good job on the defoliation, but that droop in the leaves has me a little worried. Do they need water? Is that how they normally look? The color is good.

[echdk3]

Thanks for pointing that out. They don’t normally look like that, and they did perk fully back up later that night, likely because I fed her with flowering nutes that day as well. The temps and humidity are great: 70-80 F swing throughout the day and 40-45% humidity swing, pretty consistently. I’ve been watering every third day, with nutes being applied every other watering, i.e. every sixth day. Air flow is great, and gnat stickers only show a few individual gnats so I’m not concerned there. What do you think about this droop? Think it’s okay since it perked back up? Did I let it get too dry?

[ChadWestport]

It sounds like you really have most everything dialed in for now. The droop could have been from the fresh watering, low oxygen in the root zone. Defoliation sometimes can make them droop for a few hours but the important thing is that they perked back up. So Since they did, you should be good going forward. An old trick to watering is, when the pot feels half as heavy as it does when it is fully watered, then it is time to water again. There are many "levels" to watering, but that is a good standard.