HELP! 1st grow and all my buds are crispy dry???

Thanks for taking the time to read this post and hopefully some one will respond to my question.....

I'm a long time smoker for over 40yrs but first time grower so this is my first ever!
I have read every thing I can on RUI and other sites about growing this precious flower and thought I was doing pretty good until this week...

I germinated some swag bag seed 10-20-13 to start since this was a test run on my hobby...
24x7 on seedlings and gradually moved them to 4 gal containers. Out of 12 seedlings I was left with 7 female!
I'm using a soiless mix of potted soil and spag moss mixed with some perlite and vermiculite, just keep mixing until the mix felt right to me, very airy and loose. I've feed them MG veg fertilizer a couple of times and then after they bloomed I shot them with some MG bloom boost twice. I lightly water about every other day with tap H2O.
I am using approx 300w of mixed CFL's in a small walk in closet placed above and amongst the plants. I have the lights about 6-8" from tops of plants.
12/12 now since 2-2-13and they were looking good.....I was super croping and using LST to keep them under control and again they were looking sweet!
Then the middle of March I was stupid and read an article about defoliation and pulled most of my leaves off the lower portion of my plants, (please don't say IDIOT! I been beating my self up for it enough)
The Kolas did thicken up and seemed to really respond to the treatment for about 1.5 wks and then tragedy struck! all of my beautiful buds have turned crispy and they almost crumble to the touch.
I have cured a couple of the better looking plants when all this started and the buzz is very good from them. I had one plant that was 16" tall and produce over 30grm of dried buds! She was really sticky and smelly but has lots of seeds? I still get a good buzz from her and was glad that if any had seeds it was her!
My question is that the trichomes are still between clr and cloudy, will the plant still produce these? should I wait till I see some amber tri's or just give up and start over?

well hell your almost home free now, how did you get seeds if you had 7 females? did you pull the males? if you didnt then pollen is everywhere in your room and will stay until you clean the entire room top to bottom.. crispy buds are a sign of high heat and low water.. low humidity and all around not good.. anyway pull all males and after this run pull out everything and clean from top to bottom and everywhere in between..next run try to keep temps and humidity levels on a steady level.. good luck and KEEP ON GROWIN

Yeah temp and Humidity could well be the culprit there and if the plants affected were the ones closest to the light that could be telling also.

In had a plant go crispy on me when all others in the tent were fine.

The one that went crispy was the tallest and I think suffered from the low humidity more than the others.

The one that produced seeds might have started to become jerkier. It happens sometimes n u wont notice. Also damn bro, seems almost like me and you grow in the same place. My walk in closet same size ands I'm a cfl grower

Thanks for the reply...
I watched like a hawk for males and pulled them immediately, so the only thing I can think of is that it went hermie on me from the stress of defoliation? Ive read that stress can cause that to happen.

The temp in my closet is ranging from lows at night in the upper 60's to around 80 to 90 during the day. I have 1 fan in the closet and one at the door blowing fresh air into the closet. The humidity has been in the low 20's so I thought that adding to it with a small humidifier so I added it a couple of weeks ago and the humidity stays around 30-40% I make sure that the soil stays moist so I haven't under watered them I don't think? I thought maybe the lights were too close so I moved them up to about a foot away.

Should I leave them for a couple of more weeks to see if the trichomes turn more amber? The stalks are still looking good and I'm hoping that the THC can mature a bit more? What do you think? Or should I just harvest them and start over?
I have some great looking clones off these plants to start with.

BTW: I'm a grandma growing her own med's for her and papaw...Tired of not being able to find affordable weed any more in my area, Damn pill heads every where! What happened to all the weed heads??? Up in smoke I guess!

It sounds like one of your females hemied on you. All the stress you put those poor plants though; I can only wonder how this happened.
It's hard to tell with no pictures, but I can tell you this.
When a plant is near the end of seed production it will die and when it starts producing seeds it drops resin glad, (trichome production).
In other words if your fems have seeds ands you are not interested in the seeds I would pick them, before they die on the vine.

Thanks again for the reply's....
I did pull the plant that had seeded itself, she was awesome looking at about 16" tall she had 4 main kolas and about 10 smaller ones, very sticky and she is a real good buzz! about 30grms of dried bud off her!
The other plants are about 25" tall and each one has at least 4 to 5 main top kolas and numerous smaller bud sites. I went ahead and moved the lights up some and have been running the humidifier more. I have been checking the trichomes everyday and they look the same for about a week now, so I'm wondering if there is any point of continuing the grow?
Since this is my first grow Ive never seen buds in there final stages and didn't know if this was normal for them to dry up at the end? I guess not.
I have learned a lot from this first grow and I'm sure that the next will be much better!