Noob Grow - Green Crack Auto/Fast Buds

Day 15: Third week. Phew. We got here. I had bad luck/skill with my first three seeds. It's a relief to be at this stage with the plant healthy and growing. Some here helped me and I am still very grateful. For being such a good girl, Daddy went out and bought her something special - Silica (ArmorSi), which I started giving her today. Why? Because his grow is like flying a plane through the Arc de Triomphe - doable but a little risky. If all Silica does for you is mitigate the risk of a failed (first) grow, then put that stuff in my veins. It's cheap too? Fantastic! Put it in my mouth too. A one plant grow in a loft in a 2 x 2 x3 needs risk mitigation. And the LST continues too. Day 16: I ultimately couldn't fathom letting two large fan leaves cover up 3 or more bud sites. I cut the two fan leaves that were covering the lower potential bud sites at the center of the plant. My 1st Defoliation. Just like that. And I think that's enough tinkering with her. LST is a bit dangerous when a plant has nodes this tight together, You damage tiny leaves that are very close together. No room to operate. And the only reason I defoliated at all was that the cost/benefit ratio was so low that it was totally worth the risk of a slowdown due to stress as long as it didn't end her. I'm blessed she's so short. Now she's flattened by LST and defoliated for lower bud site growth. All I wanted. All set to grow the way she is supposed to, I think. Just fertigate now Until it maybe comes time to scrog? Day 17: There was very little growth on the plant this morning. I expected that. Not crazy about the term many use to describe this situation. That the plant is "stressed" as if it had a brain and felt pain and suffering. And maybe it does. Who knows. The point is that I don't think that's what is happening here. Simply put, a good portion of the plant's sugar production and storage capacity was removed yesterday (in particular, the main stem's facilities were obliterated - on purpose - still kinder than topping.) If you had a car with three battery-engines that had a 900 mph top speed, say, and you removed one battery-engine, you shouldn't be surprised to see that the car now only has a top speed of only 600 mph the next morning. Right? I think most of what is happening here comes down to that. And I'm sure the plant is also investing some resources into reconfiguring itself post-surgery. So for the next few days, I don't expect much growth. Mentioned yesterday the main stem took a partial splitting during LST. The stem was seen about 50% healed this morning. Good news, but that might also slow things down. Concerned about the 4th node, Almost no growth at all from the 4th node leaves since the defoliation. But the fifth node IS developing, just slowly. A slower growing main stem might be an assist we need ultimately, as long as it's not a sign of impending doom. Everyone said wait 48 hours after the defoliation so I guess that's what I'll have to do. As for feeding, I gave her a regularly scheduled fertigation at 1225 EC/5.9 PH this morning. But I'm thinking of only giving her water tonight to lower the "soil" EC a bit, She's a smaller plant now. Lowering EC to 900 would be good, my gut tells me (hard), But if you try to go from 1200 EC in one feed to 900 the next, you're gonna waste a lot of feed just trying to go back up to 1200 in a couple days. I don't want to mix a second gallon of feed just to throw out most of it next week when she gets a new ratio in a new gallon. So since I gave her 300ml at 1225 ECs this morning (100 ml runoff), I'll give her like 100 ml of plain water (EC=130) tonight, (Haven't done the math yet.) Get the average daily EC to about 900 for the day. That feels like the right number to me for a plant this size. Sue me. I'm a newb. Just eyeballing it. And there was SOME growth and most of it was on the second node. It's all going according to plan, little kitty! MWUAHAHAHAHAHAHA! 👹👿😈😂 (I'm prolly faceplanting and too much of a newb to see it? Prolly.) Have a great day!