Greenbum

I think something went wrong with this grow, or perhaps it was a bad pheno. Im currently running the big bazooka strain and it should not have taken so long for your flowers to appear. In my case pistils started appearing by the end of week 1 flower, and by day 13 I already had some bud set and went in and did a full defoliation. By the end of week 3 Ive almost got buds the size of your final shots here, although they are not nearly as mature as yours look. At the same time, we have vastly different lighting and medium and nutrients so maybe that made a difference as well. Im running a 1000W HPS that was set at 600W through most of Veg, 750W through stretch and now running the full 1000W in week 4 of flower. A friend of mine is growing clones from the same mother as I am and is 3 weeks ahead of me with buds around 2inches wide or more. As for defoliation, in my case I tried not to defoliate much at all until close to flower when I did my lolipopping a little bit at a time while following a modified Kyle Kushman style of removing the lower bud sites, but leaving some of the lower fans to try to stress the plant less during week 1 flower. I then fully stripped all but the uppermost fans at the end of week 2 and the plants bounced right back and by the end of week 3 I had 2 cm flowers on all my tops and they are just getting fatter by the day.