This part of my experience I have not understood yet. I have about 3-4 weeks left in my grow and just thinking ahead. When you cut the plant down to dry for some time and begin trimming, do you want to cut the whole flower or colas into sections and clumps after it’s dried and ready to be cured? How long would you guys recommend curing for as well? I bought lids that tell me RH used to fit wide mouth Mason jars and 62% Boveda humidity packs for curing.
Ouch those suckers are expensive. I buy the cheap minis and toss them into the jars. That is if I cure in jars. Have mostly used Grove Bags recently.
First off I dry trim. Meaning I do the final trimming before curing after the buds have dried to 62% ±.
Some of this has to do with how the plant was trained and pruned. Given this qualification, for drying, I cut as large a stem as I can manage. At this point I strip large long stemmed fan leaves off. I will take more based on judgement and drying conditions.
Newly cut form the plant
The big stuff has been removed and ready for drying.
Loaded into the tent to dry. Temps always low 70’s or less and rh inside the tent gradually decreased over the next 8 days. When first loaded it was 80+%. A small fan circulated air inside the closed tent. I ran exhaust fan as needed to expel humidity. I ran it until it matched the humidity in the room - around 60%. Some use a controller to do what I do manually. (I have one but just don’t want to learn how to set it up)
In order to extend the drying time, I process the large stems further to continue drying in totes.
I break the clusters down to individual stems, remove more leaves and lay them in totes.
Example of an individual stem cleaned up and ready for the tote.
Laid out in a tote
They have been in the tote for 5 more days. I burp them once or twice a day. (more at beginning).
The hygrometers in the totes read 59%. I am happy with that.
Today I will start processing everything to go into Grove Bags. I will basically cut the bud off the stem, clean up and remove sugar leaves etc that I want removed. It is all 100% for personal use so really don’t care what it looks like.
I will post a few photos of this process.
Congrats and good luck with the harvest.
Do not use humidity packs while curing. If you need to add moisture because it was overdried, use leaves or lettuce. Put it in the jar for a day then remove.
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This is pretty much what we do although there is usually smaller stuff that goes into the bowl trimmer. We process tops because I like to handle big colas once cured and the rest is broken down before drying. I use a mesh rack in my basement space which is almost ideal conditions for drying. You want somewhere between 7 and 10 days to dry. This will help with the terpene profile at cure.
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Man…@beardless that is an awesome display, you should be doing demos for a living
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Thanks I appreciate that. I like to take photos of what I do. It is easier to show-and-tell.
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Continued
I grabbed a few out of the tote
Cut the buds off of the stems
Trimmed them to go into Grove Bags or jars
For this I trimmed everything
I also bag and cure the trim. Use for extracts, shake for hash - who knows what.
Because there are a lot of smaller buds and I would go nuts trimming it all, I’ll sort and separate big and small buds. I’ll trim the nice ones and save the small ones for something else.
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Fantastic information with visuals, thanks for posting.
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