Pistils are now starting to increase. Now feeding 1/4 tspn Big Bloom and 1/4 tspn Tiger Bloom for a 32oz watering schedule every other day and foliar spraying with Magnesium (epsom salt disolved in water, 1/8th teaspoon for 8 fl oz). Ceasing magnesium supp. going forward after today.
Culled a second plant, after defoliation it might have fit but I expect budding would just put me right back here at culling. I genuinely expected to kill 1 or 2 plants with mistakes, not have all 3 survive into preflower so I'm not salty about it. Still think I'll run 2 plants for the next grow and be more aggressive with the LST / offset-planting and trimming.
Odor has come down considerably, even before culling the 2nd plant the sour odors had fallen down to well below my acceptable threshold.
Defoliated lower large leaves. Upper 6 large root node leaves remain, 2 lower ones are tucked. Leaving these to be mobile nutrient sources as long as possible, most shoots are starting to pass them though so I'm probably done with trimming.
Polar vortex ripping through has made things interesting. Super cold in the house and the woodburner can only get it so hot so it's been 60 degree nights. Got the plant off the floor by 2 inches which made me decide to aggressively tie it down while I still can before flower starts in earnest as there's only about 6" of additional headspace for it grow without bending it over. LST'ed down it's 14" tall at the root cola. The cold has definitely slowed things down and at night when temps hit -5 F outside you could see her droop from the cold oozing up the floor.
Minor orange spots that might be light burn from foliar droplets or calcium low relative to supplemented magnesium. It's 2 small orange dots, I'm not freaking out. Damaged two shoots, unfortunately they're kind of high up, which is a suck. One just a minor injury but the other hanging by its' skin before taping.
Should be in full-on proper flower by next week, assuming there isn't Polar Vortex 2.0 around the corner.
Right now my biggest concern is that I'm going to have to just toss this plant for getting too big, which is frustrating. 18" tall with still 4 weeks to go at minimum. In the future I'm topping every auto, I don't care what the standard advice is about topping autoflowers, I'm not trusting reported height ranges ever again and I'm going to top just for the sake of stunting them deliberately from now on.
@James, added blister pack images to confirm the strain and lot #. I'm very satisfied with the performance of the plant as well as the performance of the plants I culled. Heavy pine stinking buds while it's still spewing yellow pistils.