Different pheno?

All plants are individuals and will flower at different time frames, even those of the same strain and from seeds from the same packet. Different strains will flower at vastly different time frames, from staring much earlier and finishing much later, with flowering times of anywhere between 6 and 20+ weeks! Slight "purpling" of the leaves can be normal with certain genetics and can also be a sign of excess potassium or be induced by very cool nights, but really nothing to worry about. Your feeling of defoliation being counter intuitive is correct, removing healthy green leaves reduces your plants capacity to produce energy, which will slow growth. The "bud sites" that you "exposed" were relying on the very leaves you removed to provide them with the energy they require to actually grow. The small "bud leaves" can in no way produce as much energy as even just one big fan leaf. The older leaves also provide your plant with a ready made source of nutrition it will draw upon during flowering. This is why the older leaves can go yellow on otherwise healthy and well fed plants during flowering. So, by removing healthy green leaves, you not only reduce your plants energy production which slows growth, you are also depriving it of a ready source of vital growth elements (carbs, amino acids sugars etc) that are "stored" in the older leaves for re-use during flowering, as it is far more efficient for your plant to re-use the previously made vital growth elements from her older leaves, as it is to grow flowers AND make new growth elements at the SAME time. Cannabis is pretty clever in this regard. I would also suggest stopping with the molasses, it has no scientific benefit for your plant, it is a myth that giving sugar will make more "sugar" (trichomes) on the plant. Molasses has absolutely no nutritional value for your plant and this theory is an "old wives tale" perpetuated by hippies 50 years ago and which should have died out as a joke about 49 years ago. Molasses may have a very, very slight benefit to soil microbes, but giving either fulvic or humic acid will actually be 100 times more beneficial to your plant and soil microbes than giving molasses ever will. Hope this helps ,......... Organoman.