Thinking of pulling this whole run at this point, the stems are in a bad way and general structure has really suffered.
FIM'd both girls this week & gave compost tea(ecothrive biosys) to aid recovery. Will make a decision on growing them out depending on how they respond.
(Update end of week.)
So in the first week these girls stretched terribly, instead of riding it out and letting them adjust I tried a trick I've applied with tomatoes in the garden and coiled an inch of the excess under the surface and covered it.
After a burst of invigorating from the microbe tea(biosys) these girls seem to be recovering from the stress fairly well. The only down side, the stems have broken the surface and left me with these crazy bonsai style stems & the girls are very short and bushy, concerned the stems won't hold any weight later in life..
Will give this another week and make my decision
TLDR; Don't interfere with nature when you can help it, especially with autoflowers.
Update day 28 from sprout.
Bbk1 showing signs of nitrogen toxicity after perking up, I had to use the bottle measure last week instead of a syringe. Much less accurate so assume this is the cause, just ph water for a while.
Bbk2 perking up slightly. I did think these girls looked a funny shape and now I can see the stem properly its starting to make sense ๐คฆโโ๏ธ๐คฃ๐คฃ