First time grower - a bit lost in the flowering stage.

[eurodev]

Hello everyone (and thanks to the admins for letting me in),

A couple of months ago I've decided to go ahead and try having a first grow indoors; I've chosen DWC in hydroton with GHE nutrients, and started a Hulkberry Auto under a 300W LED rig. I would say that overall the plant looked very happy for most of its life, despite early issues with keeping the ph at a correct level.

For more context, somewhere around 2-3 weeks into flowering, there was a notable incident where I was away and had an extractor malfunction, which made the plant sweat a lot (hence drinking a sizable amount of its bucket), and basically went to nutrient overload, then to total lockout due to the ph plummeting. I was away for some days so my estimate is that it remained in that state for >24hrs. I fixed everything and it resumed flowering, although very slowly in my beginner's eye (I guess it got stunned for at least a week).

Now my problem is that I'm not sure where I am inside the stage and if it's legitimate to consider that it is flowering extremely slowly (because of the incident or not). Last week I've taken the decision to harvest some of the main colas which were really sticking out (I haven't experimented with training yet) and looked ripe enough. I am a bit confused with the rest of the plant so I'll try to break down my concerns with several key questions :

1. Does the plant look somewhat fucked ? You'll find the whole plant in pic. 1 and a zoom of the "fullest" branches in pic. 2.
2. To me the buds look super small, not full at all, despite being several week into flowering; am I judging this wrong ?
3. I think I have a strong gradient in ripeness (if that's a correct word); you'll find in pic. 3 and 4 one of the top buds and one of the bottom buds. Is that normal ?
4. Overall I'm not sure if I should take the loss and harvest the top buds, which may be small but of which every pistil has turned brown.

I hope I did not stretch this too much. In advance, thank you very much for any feedback you guys would give me, I'd really appreciate some clarity in all this.

[growell]

Ok mate plant looks ok what color are your tricomes thats what i would go off check up and down plant how long it been in flower if thats your first plant grown in doors you done an amazing job mine didnt look like that dont know what you mean by gradient i would let it keep growing till you get a few amber tricomes plus look at defoliating next time more light to bud sights the better plus your buds will grow longer into plant no leaves blocking it hope this helps

[Jebidiah]

I agree with growell it looks good and next time add some defoliation and training. It did take a pretty good hit but if you continue the TLC to the end it’ll be fine. The buds not being dense is generally a light issue but they are still growing and will chub up some before harvest. The gradient in ripeness you see I think is where the lower buds are in the shade down below.

[3Berries]

Be careful with the defoliating as it really sets the plant back. I would do so the last two weeks of veg. My last two grows I've do it as I went to flower and it suffers. Most notably it really cuts down the water she uses so it's hard to get the K, Ca, Mg where it should be. I think I'm going to start foliar feeding with the K, Ca and Mg and still using nutes in the water.

[eurodev]

Thank you guys for your inputs!

growell I'm having a hard time interpreting trichomes colors atm but mostly they seem white on the top buds. On lower buds I would say i can see a little glitter under the light so i guess they still have some transparency to them. I haven't done a good job at taking notes so I'm not even sure how old it is, I would say 3 months from when it was put in the hydro.

Jebidiah What does TLC mean ? My light seems actually a bit oversized for the current closet so yes maybe it's me being a bit impatient.

3Berries Yes I'm extremely shy about cutting down perfectly good leaves, I tried tucking them rather, which only worked up to a point I guess. I won't risk it until doing proper research.