Health and Defoliation

Why defoliate 3 week old plants?? What for?? ALL of the plants energy to grow and thrive is made by the leaves. The amount of defoliation you did has probably reduced your potential and slowed the plants too. If you are unsure, it is better to ask first then act, not act then ask if it is ok! Less leaves = less energy being made = less potential growth........it is that simple! I would never defoliate autos.

leaves capture light. visualize the canopy before compared to now. which has greater surface area of leaves captruing light? Drastically different? then you removed WAY too many leaves. I don't care what label some mope slapped on it like "mainlining" or whatever, lol.. you can do all the things mainlining requires without removing 2/3rds of your canopy. unles you are growing a very short plant, none of those early nodes will produce a good bud anyway and likely pruned off later. Leaves receiving light at this point is 10x more important than light hitting a so-called budsite or axillary branch. If you see some extreme stretching of that underneath the canopy, go ahead and react but until that point the leaf should stay. Otherwise all the photosynthesis the big leaves do will outweight any dogma about getting light to bud sites and such.

I would say yes the defoliation was a bit much, when your plants are this small they don't need that aggressive of a defoliation or one at all, they are using them leaves to grow and no/less leaves=no/less growth. It slows it right down and sets it back making the grow take longer. For the next run I would avoid doing that, but that's just me. When defoliating their should be a goal in mind to either help airflow or light penetration into to the canopy. And none of that was needed in your grow from the looks of it. As for health, they are looking fine and green. prob a little stressed out from the aforementioned items., keep the LST light and gentle. Or try using the LST clips they have out nowadays for a easy option. Best Of Luck!

They look great and good job on the LST. My general rule is if the leaf is covering a branch I either try to tuck it under or it comes off. You want to keep as much surface area to grab all those photons and not let them hit dirt. So maybe you went a little heavy but I do not think it will affect the plant noticeably. I hope this helps.

They're looking fine.