It’s the desert air it’s sooo dry my method has changed alot over the years the best change imo is I went back old-school and started hanging my plants whole. This adds about a day to my drying time, of course every plant is a little different
Edit = and I jar it up pretty wet even if I leave the lids off for a day or two to get it under 70% then I do like you are saying on burping it down to 65 at that point I start the cure. My difference from yours is I try to never let my moisture go below 60% and for sure 55%
Thanks, YuccaBud! The “moisture” of my first plant is 27% … crunchy, lawngrassy, and harsh. She still gives a good stone The second plant is much better, due to reading this forum. My current baby will be a bit more of a challenge, since she’ll be ready when the air really dries out, so I’ll be doing what you did, plus I’ll hang up the entire plant, which also helped my second plant’s drying.
I dried inside my tent, with automation keeping the humidity. I used a bucket of water with a shop towel and a circulation fan to keep the humidity going at 65%. I also left my fan leaves attached and hung them branch by branch with herb drying racks.
I used an old foldable metal shelf and hung the entire plant in the guest room. I used a humidifier and set the house AC to 67*, with the ceiling fan on low. My wife wasn’t very happy with me, but the results were worth the nonsense. Honestly, putting wet MJ in a jar had me really worried about mold. It smelled like fresh cut grass the first week. Every morning I emptied the jars and bags on a table for an hour or two, while I inspected the buds for anything looking sketchy. Going into the 3rd week the smell began to change from grass clippings to a sweeter smell, a hint of mint and honeydew…the Skunk smell is more from the smoke vs the buds. The buds crumble, not crunchy, burns smooth. I have to grind up a couple of grams at the beginning of the week, since soap and water can’t remove the resin from me fingers. Might need to invest in a grinder
For sure! Try washing your hands with 91% rubbing alcohol or even prep pads from a 1st aid kit. I was worried about molds too. I decided that the best way was to bud wash with h202 and water to kill any potentially deposited spores prior to drying. Then after dried, for the first week, every day I would pull out the buds on wax paper for ten mins open air in a still room. Then the second week, I did it every other day, same way. 3rd week every 3 days I would burp jar for 10 mins, after that, if mold was gonna form it already would have. Humidity isn’t was causes mold, at least not on its own. High Humidity and high c02 combined will give you mold. As long as you allow for gas exchange, after a time there will not be enough moisture in the jar and it won’t matter the amount of c02.
Very wise on the mold issue. I’ve seen so much written about mold it had me freaking out!! In 40 years of growing vegetables I’ve never seen mold on my plants. I have a 71 Charger waiting to be built and it has no paint remaining on the body…with zero rust. AZ is an odd state for growing(harvesting), but once you learn the tricks anything is possible
My quest to continue to learn Everything about MJ has me wanting to learn more! I raise chickens and breed them all year long, so I do have some understand of the terminology you might use to explain. The potted plant is Texas Chem, if I re-veg this plant at the end of the season (super-cropping?), then grow a male plant from the collected seeds (back crossing?), what would the results become of those plants?
If I breed a Black Copper Marans rooster with a Barred Rock hen I’ll get a sex linked chick (Majestic Marans). This pairing of offspring allows me to separate males and females just by looking at their feather color. If the offspring breed to each other the results will look nothing like either parents. The mutts will lay good eggs and they’ll still taste like chicken.
Like the chickens when you recross the plants you will get more seeds that will grow more plants that will make more seeds that will still taste like MJ
I had an older neighbor who collected seeds from an Early Girl (hybrid) tomato plant. The following year she set those seeds and grew out the plants. She told me how those plants grew with funky leaves and didn’t produce a single fruit. Since most of the MJ seeds are a cross of two or more parent plants I was wondering if there was a negative effect. If MJ is like chicken, then that’s one less item to freak me out.
I had to make a funny because all the crossing of plants n different levels of seeds once you cross back is not something I know much about. I’ve done like you and allowed a male to mature and rubbed it on a female to get seeds only because I had to have seeds, they weren’t so easy to get in the 80s n 90s. I mean I’d pick a mom n dad to see what I would get but that’s the extent of my knowledge.
With chickens it’s all about the total number of birds. Breeding a mutt chicken back with a purebred chicken you might be able to breed the mix out, but that would be a ton of breeding/hatching.
I’m sure with MJ plants it’s going to take 1,000s of plants to reproduce or make your own “stable” strain.
I can only sleep 3 to 4 hours a night, so I do everything in extreme to slow my thoughts at night. Growing MJ has been a great outlet, I’m hoping I’ll get to smoke some in the future
I’ve been at it so long…
It’s just another job…
Sorry to say fellow cultivators…
I just pulled 2 # off of 1 table…
Have 2 more coming 3 weeks apart…
Lots of work…
Everything is turn key for my situation…
I really only go out to check on them every 5 days…
For some reason I still can’t post pics…
I think its on my end…
Turned alot of stuff off on my phone…
Probably why…
I compost all year long and it’s such a pain keeping the vegetable compost separate from the chicken compost. I only dug one hole this year since I had no clue how things would go with my first grow. I feed and water the plant in that one new hole once a week. I’m positive I could skip watering a month and that plant wouldn’t be impacted in any way. I’m thinking if I dig 5 or 6 new holes and layer the vegetable compost with the dry directly in those new holes I’ll be on autopilot next year.
The second plant is much better, due to reading this forum. My current baby will be a bit more of a challenge, since she’ll be ready when the air really dries out, so I’ll be doing what you did, plus I’ll hang up the entire plant, which also helped my second plant’s drying.
