Pre-flower defoliation critique

[Gingerbeard]

Here we have my first GWE sanctioned defoliation. I'm going to flower on Sunday. Yesterday was nutes. Today was the trimming.
The lower fan leaves were trimmed, being wary of the bud sites, and the uppers were left alone. Lots of room in the middle to pull in secondary colas and give good circulation. The picture Close is what I'm calling a 'secondary cola.' This pic is pre-pre-flower defoliation. The two lowest fan leaves were removed.
Had I not done a little LSTing, the plants would be in the 14" range. Best case scenario, I double my height during flowering which would put me 4" above my max height of 24". That'll take some CLSTing (Clever LSTing.)
The -A and -B pictures are before and after. Int- are before and after inside the flower chamber. I don't seem to be able to change the order of the photos. Sorry about that.

 

[PhantomSulker]

Looking very good!

 

[lucas94]

Looks good but Looks like a lot of N in there. or am i overreacting to the dark green Colours all the time like a newb?

 

[alltatup]

Ginger, my recent experience with what you refer to as secondary colas: They did indeed shoot up, and they were long and lanky with some decent bud at the top, but naked all the way down. If I had LST'd better, I would have

a. had a concrete plan of how many colas I wanted to develop, and
b. I would have pruned away the competition that shoots up during the first three weeks of flowering with very few internodes.

If I'd done that, I would have ended up with 8 big ol fat colas per each plant instead of a few fat colas and a bunch of colas with a nice bud sites only at the top.

 

[Gingerbeard]

Thanks, all.
Alltatup, come Sunday I'll have three weeks until my next defoliation. I have each plant trained and trimmed for four main colas. I'm working with decent bag seed and haven't grown this one. Comparing this to the others I've grown, there are a lot of these secondary's. I'll see how they do over the next three weeks. If they take up too much room for the mains, I'll cut them. Although I 'm hesitant to. My major beginners harvest of only 18 seeded grams have been the result of over defoliation.
On a side note, a banana Kush dab, or more, because I have to dust my ficas. Probably more.

 

[Gingerbeard]

Okay. Wherever I have a bud site I have a secondary. If I trim these I literally will have four long stems with a couple leaves at the ends that are producing more secondaries. There are no main colas. An interesting thing is that both plants are doing the same thing. I almost think they're the same strain of bag seed but one is showing 7, 8, and 9 fingers while the other is showing 5 and 7 fingers. I figure about the only thing I can do is remove the fan leaves at the bases of the secondaries and let genetics take it's course.
The picture of the tall plant cam from GWE at the web site below. Old Head had a couple plants that were lanky like this. They grew to over five feet tall. Could it be I'm training and butchering a strain that is naturally lanky?
I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that going 12x12 will change things up.

https://www.growweedeasy.com/nebulas-flowering-stage-defoliation-tutorial

 

[alltatup]

Gingerbeard I could be totally off base on your plant; I limited the final harvest by too much defol. and not enough training.