Mystery Seed Outdoor Winter

So, absolutely against the recommendation I received from a friend of mine who's been growing for 20+ years, I pruned/defoliated my plants up a bit this week. I decided to for a few reasons. - the plants were really dense with foliage, many leaves overlapping and pushing other leaves - most of the bud sites were shaded under several layers of leaves - the leaves pilling up would have been restricting airflow quite a lot, I want to prevent budrot or mold by increasing aeration - I wanted to control where the plants were growing, and focus their energy into the buds - with this being an outdoor grow late in the season with less sun I felt it was more important to expose the developing buds to the sun With all that said, I think my plants have responded extremely well to the pruning in the last few days. I've never pruned or defoliated before so this is going to serve as a test for me. I like doing new things and seeing what happens. No matter what, these plants look really good right now and I'm sure I'll get a decent harvest, I'm trying to push it from decent to fantastic. My PPM is a bit high, though none of the plants look like they're being hindered by it. I did a partial water change on 2 of the 3 (the one in the 3 gallon bucket and the one that looks more like and indica). The 3 gallon bucket plant was at a PPM of 5000ish so I made sure to get it more in line with the other two, and with the partial water change I got it to around 2000. The other plants are sitting at right about 3000. I will continue to monitor the plants and check PPM, if it doesn't go down next week I think I'll do another partial water change. I want to keep pumping in nutrient while preventing any burn or lockout. Trichomes are no observable on the two plants in larger buckets. The smaller bucket plant was the last to sprout, so it's about a week or two behind the others. This week has been pretty poor weather where I'm at. Lots of rain and clouds. I've kept the plants under cover but still in direct sunlight. This coming week is supposed to be clear sky again so I'll move them to capture the most light once the rain stops. I know defoliation is debatable, especially with outdoor grows, but I like to push boundaries. Here's a list of the things I've done with this grow: - kratky method hydroponics (other than a partial water change I have added no water since starting in buckets, no airstone, no pump) - Winter grow (shortest light period of the year here) - Topping (and it looks like one is more like FIMing, also one grew as if it were topped without my input) - Dense nutrient load (I've added more nutrient in this grow than any grow I have previously done. Mostly because I never achieved super large buds and I'm really aiming for that this time) - Water change (like an aquarium, I've never done a water change other than flush before, this week called for it with the high PPM which I think was residual from nutrient loading in veg so I wanted to make sure there's room for the flower nutes) - Defoliation/pruning (nothing too crazy or drastic, started this week and don't plan to trim again unless I see a need to)