D56 - Today is the first day in the eighth week of veg for #2 and the seventh for #1. This will be the final week of veg for the girl as I'm ready to flip in a few days. I did the last heavy defoliation by removing most leaves and branches except the tops. I aim to get the girl to put all the flowering energy into the tops and hopefully result in big colas without popcorn nugs or larf. I did keep a few clones from each girl, though. After defoliation, I sprayed down the girl with my chili tincture to combat the thrips. I took great care to hit all leaves on both sides. This tincture is harsh to work with, and I was coughing like mad, and I damn near filled my N95 mask with snot (yummy!). After all this snot, drool and coughing, I just wanted to be done for the day, so I stressed checking out how my new scrog frame fits. The frame, of course, fell and broke one of the tops clean off. Ugh! I tried to fix it with some tape but the break was in a weird spot and it didn't work. Not a massive deal as it was a corner top, and there will be 15 other tops. Still annoying, but hey, it's my damn fault for stressing. D57 - The girls have bounced back nicely from their heavy defoliation. I just snapped a couple of pics as I hung a blue sticky trap in the tent. I always have regular yellow sticky traps in my tent to monitor pest pressure. However, thrips aren't that interested in yellow but are attracted to blue. D59 - I flipped my lights today from the veg mode to the flower-inducing mode. I have no idea how much these girls will stretch, so better sooner than later. Also, I finally got around to start training one of the tops toward the middle of each girl. (About damn time!) I've thought about it for quite a while but have been ignoring it. The lights are flipped now, so we are almost out of veg time. Now or never! D62 - The girls look healthy, and I can't see any thrip damage on the newer leaves. Fingers crossed that the buggers are gone! I gave each girl around 2.5-liters of water @ pH 6.3.