Big enough for 27 Days?

LST to even out canopy - constant maintenance. Manipulate apical dominance based on need. Don't defoliate. Selectively pruning for good reasons are fine - e.g. to avoid condensation from overlapping leaves etc... Never just blindly remove a bunch of leaves and think it has a positive effect. That is bro-science. Removing leaves does not allow a plant to "focus" on other areas. It can even delay flower phase in some cases. Though that last one could be useful for autoflowers, but at that point just grow photoperiods for consistency, lol. CO2 is your limiting factor. Leaves are lungs. Removing leaves reduces co2 intake which reduces rate of growth. Don't shoot yourself in the foot. Leaves are also the primary 'manufacturing' plant', so again, removing them is just shooting yourself in the foot and leads to slower/less growth. As far as training, you'll get much more consistently good yields if you start working backward from a target canopy with 2.5-3 colas per sq ft. Get to that end goal as efficienty as possible with training and/or topping. Try to make the vascular tissue equally distributed for consistently similar colas - being mostly level goes without saying.

Yep looks good. Experience a lot mate, it will bring you forward. Normally in your small area i would defoliate a bit at the end of flowering stretch, like 3 weeks into flower/ when pistils show, i also then lolipopp them a bit, depending on how high they became. And then slowly take of 80% of the fanleaves till beginning of maturing, but in a paste your plant always has enoughs leaves to be healthy. But thats only for the future. You could also check my or other diares for a comparison, there are many people that grow SoGs. Also how strong is your light? the stronger and higher the light the less defoliation is needed, since you have better penetration with stronger lights. So finally for now i wouldnt touch them till the stretch is over, Single big leaves that block branches now i would try to bend rather then cut. The stretch in beginning of flowering makes the biggest part of grow and shouldnt be interrupted at all. they normally grow 2/3 of their height in those 2-3weeks and you dont wanna miss that obviously.