Got a few sour diesel plants still vegging, looking to harvest them into some really potent cured marijuana! My harvest last year wasn’t good lost some of my smell and it just never came out good. Needless to say I’ve got rid of that whole setup and am now planning on perfecting a drying\curing area. Need some wisdom from some experienced growers that harvest some of the stankyest bud around! Thanks in advance guys very eager to get this all setup although I’ve got roughly four months until harvest this year!
2 Likes
I’ve read everything online that I could but I’d feel better asking someone here to help me with this setup. Know anyone that’s willing to help me @Hogmaster @Countryboyjvd1971
I hang hole plant a week if it’s not dry I cut each branch till completely dry then put in mason jars and burp my jars 2 times a day for 2 weeks and I keep in a cool dark place then I open I time a week to burp for 2-3 weeks then just keep it in Jars for a month and it’s almost perfect the longer it cures the better it is I think a Minimum of two months for best results
9 Likes
I’m hoping for two huge plants, hopefully getting a yield of 4 - 6.5 lbs. Don’t really have anywhere to hang them up its gonna be allot I’m expecting my last grow was one blue dream auto harvested about 2 ounces and I did about what you said your technique included. Kept it whole hung upside down for roughly one week, until branches were bending over but not snapping. Kept it all in airtight mason jars for around two months keeping my schedule for opening the jars almost identical to yours @Hogmaster. I was very disappointed in my ending product and have considered making bubble hashish but my heart desires a huge quantity of the best quality buds.
I forgot to mention I need to be extremely stealthy thru out this whole operation. Not necessarily worried about the strong aroma
1 Like
@FloridaSon @peachfuzz how do you guys go about drying\curing?
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I try to cut the plant down with one cut if possible , but I’m not always able to because I scrogg and sometimes i have up to 4 different strains in one table… either way…
Then I hang the whole plant upside down in the dark in my bathroom for how ever long is nessacery for the plant to dry… up to a month sometimes… humidity runs about 25% unless my wife takes a bath in there and then it rises to about 45% which works for me because I live in the desert where my outside temps get up to 130 degrees and is super dry… so my bathroom keeps it from drying to fast… I can usually tell when there ready to go into the jars because the smell gets insane … that’s just when stems are ready to snap , that’s when I yank all the water leaves off and do a final trim and into the jars they go and into a dark closet and i burp every other day for about 2 to 3 weeks and that’s basically it… 
4 Likes
Just read something you said up above… I can tell you right now that you jarred them up to early , you want branches to pop and bend , but not snap apart from each other…
They should smell something fierce before going into the jars and there should be no hint of a green or grassy smell at all…
Also , I dont recommend wet trimming … it seems like I can always tell when people wet trim there buds , because it never loses that wet grass taste…
The reason I dry trim is because it allows the plant to feed off of itself while its hanging and drying the whole time , which allows it to consume all of the chlorophyll… my buds are fu#$in ridiculous when it comes to taste and smell…
10 Likes
Okay, so your saying no need for an extra grow tent or some kind of plastic bin that I can regulate the humidity and temperature. Would that help me any if I did make an area that was climate controlled? I live in North Carolina it’s pretty humid everywhere here but very hot. @peachfuzz
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I do pretty much the same thing as @peachfuzz and @Hogmaster, but I usely cut of branch by branch and hang from a coat hanger or something similar in a cool dark place until the stems get pretty dry the do a final trim and into the jars, I see some do cardboard boxes and paper bags but Imo that pulls too much from the plant
1 Like
This should help. @Whyteboy1994
A common misconception of marijuana cultivation, especially among first-time growers, is that harvest time is like gym class in grade school—it’s still a class you have to go to but it requires less thought and more fun than an actual science class. Unfortunately, underestimating the final phases of a grow operation can be a very costly mistake when it comes down to grading the outcome of your buds.
Fatal errors in areas such as flushing, cutting and curing buds can lead to big disappointment after long months of hard work and care. To be sure this doesn’t happen to you, and to ensure the highest quality of your cannabis—no matter what strain it is—it’s important to take note of a few Key Points of Harvest Time.
The first, and perhaps most important, aspect of harvesting cannabis is knowing exactly when to start chopping down the ladies. A precision harvest is essential for potent cultivation. Growers must be very careful not to cut down plants that are not yet at the pinnacle of resin production, but they must also be wary of cutting plants too late—at a time when THC production has curtailed and resin glands begin to degrade.
There are various methods by which even the most amateur grower can tell when buds are truly ripe for the picking. The simplest and quickest way to know is by examining the pistils, or long hairs, that cover the plant’s buds. At the onset of flowering, these pistils are white and stringy. But as the flowering period comes to an end, they begin to turn color, first from white to orange and then again to a dark red or brown. These color changes signify the maturation of the buds; however, the color and time frame may vary significantly across different varieties of cannabis.
Therefore, a better, yet slightly more complicated, method for determining ripeness is through trichome examination. Trichomes are the actual resin glands that contain THC and other psychoactive cannabinoids, and they are very delicate and easily ruptured. These trichomes are visible on the outside of buds and small leaves and look like little white sugar crystals to the naked eye. However, with the power of a magnifying glass or simple microscope, you can see that trichomes are comprised of a stalk and resin head and are clear or white in color.
As with pistils, trichomes also begin to change color as the buds mature. But in this scenario, a grower wants to harvest buds before they get too dark in color. Even a subtle amber hue in these glands could mean that cannabinoids have begun breaking down and decomposing, which means less potent pot. Using a magnifier between 50x-100x, advanced growers look for a creamy or milky white color in trichomes that tells them it’s time to harvest.
The Catch
As with most tricks of the trade, there is always a catch. And in this case it can be taken quite literally as well, because when checking your buds for ripeness you’ll want to “catch” any and all clues that can signal maturation—a few weeks before harvest time. Having a “harvest heads-up” can be extremely beneficial for growers, not only to prep equipment and rooms for drying and curing, but also to prep the plants for taste and smooth smoking.
If a grower can consistently examine trichomes and keep accurate time records from the start of the flowering photoperiod (12/12 light cycle), then it should be no problem for the grower to begin flushing out the grow medium in preparation for the harvest.
The Two-Step Flush
The last two weeks of flowering should be spent getting rid of any built-up nutrients in the growing medium, a process called leaching, or flushing. By removing all access to nutrients, the plant begins to consume its stored food reserves. These reserves are nasty compounds that we don’t want in our smoke, such as sugars, starches and various other elements. Harvesting plants that still have these undesirable elements present will only result in a harsh smoke and terrible burnability.
Flushing should begin about 14 days before harvest by stopping all nutrients and using only pure water to feed the plants. By providing no nutrients, you force the plant to rely only on what is left in the growing medium to feed on. The actual act of flushing is achieved by over-irrigating the medium until the nutrients inside are dissolved and washed out the bottom of the container. The best way to do this is with a two-step flush technique. (The process is an easy one.)
First, flood the grow medium with a heavy dose of water and wait a few minutes to allow all of the salts (nutrient buildup) to break down. Then add more water to chase out the first dose. By waiting a few minutes after adding the first dose of water, you’re allowing enough time for the water to dissolve the salts. As salts decompose, they can be effectively flushed out by the second dose. Traditional leaching usually employs only the first flush of water, which isn’t always adequate for complete dissolution.
A few days after flushing, you should notice signs of nitrogen deficiency. The leaves will go from dark to light green, eventually turning completely yellow. Another sign is a reddening of the leaf stems, starting at the center of the leaf where the blades come together.
Test your flush by snapping off a leaf and tasting the juice that flows from the stem. If the taste is bitter, there’s still plenty of food in the plant’s system. When the juices are clean and taste like pure water, the plant is clean enough for harvest. The bitterness is from nutrients and other chemicals that you definitely do not want in your smoke.
Dry Air = More Resin
One final flush should occur a day or two before harvesting, with the final 24 hours of the garden’s life being spent in relative dryness. This last deluge should be done with fresh water and can be a single or a two-step flush, depending on how much fertilizer was applied previous to the final two weeks of flowering. This will be the final watering your plants ever get. In doing this, you help ensure that the plants will begin to slowly dehydrate as you approach harvest, which in turn will aid the plants in their final hours of resin production.
Some gardeners even like to allow their medium to go bone-dry before harvesting. The idea is that resin production seems to skyrocket if the medium is allowed to dry before harvesting, but this isn’t due to dry medium – it’s due to dry air.
When the relative humidity in the garden is low, your resin production will increase. This is a natural response cannabis has to dry air, an attempt to protect itself from hot, dry conditions. Marijuana resin actually has one of the highest UV-resistance ratings in the plant kingdom. The resin reflects light, preventing the buds from getting sunburn. (This is also why it’s so easy for helicopters to spot marijuana from the sky; it glows when seen through UV-sensitive equipment.)
Lowering the humidity in the room on that last night before harvest morning will ensure increased resin production, without having to let the medium go bone-dry first. Additionally, some growers like to subject their gardens to prolonged dark periods of up to 24 hours just before cutting, claiming they notice spikes in resin production. This is all right as the low humidity will cut down on light uptake anyway, plus it helps to make sure liquid foods within the plants drain down to the root zone.
Harvest & Manicure
When the big day arrives it is best to start early, before the light period begins in the growroom. If the grow lamps turn on, it’s okay to cut them completely and work by standard room lighting. Begin by cutting the entire plant away from the root ball. If the plants are too large to harvest with one cut at the bottom, start by cutting the larger, heavier branches first. Remember to leave one or two larger stems connected to the branches you are cutting off. These stems will form nice “Vs” on the branches for easy hang drying.
Most indoor growers begin taking off the large fan leaves about a week before actual harvest. This is a good idea, especially once these leaves begin paling from green to yellow in color. Continue your harvest by taking off all leaves not associated with the buds and then move on to trimming off the smaller sugar leaves. Look for leaves with little resin coverage first and then move into the interior of the nuggets. It’s easier to remove leaves within the buds once they have dried out a bit, but that adds extra time and a second round of manicuring. By turning buds over and getting to the underside of smaller sugar leaves, it becomes easier to snip away at the stem and remove the entire leaf. Many growers like to only trim off leaf edges that come out of buds, leaving an aesthetic shape to the bud with the heavily resinated portion of the sugar leaves still intact within the buds.
Once the plants are cut, trimmed and manicured to perfection, it is best to hang branches upside down on strings strung across open spaces to get maximum air flow over your buds. Keeping buds on the branches does slow the drying, as the branches do retain some water however, this is the easiest way to completely surround buds with dry air without using drying chambers or machines.
Drying for Taste and Burnability
Now that you’ve harvested and are ready to dry and cure, you will want to preserve as much of the vibrant color and taste of your herb as possible. Buds should hang dry for five to seven days at the ideal temperature of about 70ºF with 50 percent humidity. You want to get most of the water out of the buds in those first days and then slow the process down for another week or so during the curing process.
Remember that a plant is not dead upon cutting—it is still very much alive. A plant is effectively dead when the water pressure inside is too low to continue vascular movement. In other words, when the waterworks stop, the plant is dead. The goal here is to dry the plant as evenly as possible and at a nice slow pace. When buds are rapidly dried, the plant tissue can trap in unwanted starches and nitrates which cause buds to burn unevenly and with an awful taste.
At four to five days into the dry, the tips of some buds might be dry enough to pluck off and sample. After the buds have gone through their full cycle of drying, we want to slow the whole thing down and draw the rest of the moisture out very gradually. This is the curing process.
What’s the Cure?
If your herb is harvested correctly, there is very little need for long cures. Long cures are needed to make harsh herb smoke smoother. If you start out with smooth, clean herb, there’s less need for long cures. Most buds should be cured and ready to smoke in less than two weeks after the drying period. Expert growers who harvest properly can complete curing in five or six days, but a good average can easily range from 10 to 14 days.
Inexperienced growers often tend to get impatient and only cure for a few days, but this can be a costly mistake when it comes to potency. Allowing the buds to cure evenly, which means drying at a slower rate, removes moisture within the buds so that all the THC can be converted in its psychoactive form.
The curing process evens out the moisture levels in the herb. You want the same amount of moisture in the center of the buds as you do on the outside of the buds until they are almost totally devoid of fluids. Completely drying the herb too fast can trap moisture in the middle and not allow for a proper cure.
For the curing process, you want to put the half-dried buds into air-tight containers. Inside the container, the buds will become evenly moist, inside and out, as they begin to “sweat.” You can check to see if your buds are sweating and releasing moisture by gently squeezing them between your fingers to see if they feel damper than they did a few hours before sealing them up. Glass jars with rubber seals and lockdown lids are the best option for curing, but for large amounts of harvested buds, you’ll need something much bigger. Tight-sealing rubber or plastic bins are the best option for large quantities of buds but many growers feel these containers impart a plastic-type taste onto the buds. This can be offset by adding a small slice of lemon or orange peel to the bins toward the end of your cure.
Once the buds are again evenly moist, open the containers to let the moist air exchange with fresh air. Air exchanges are essential to the curing process. Not only do they prevent condensation from forming in your curing bins, but the fresh air is drier than the air you just allowed to escape from the container. The moisture still trapped in the herb will again slowly escape and moisten the new, fresh air. Open the container several times a day to exchange the moistened air with fresh air to slowly draw out the moisture in the buds. Eventually (again, one to two weeks) the moisture level in the herb will be at the right level to stash away and, of course, smoke!
What Time of Day to Harvest?
Timing the harvest is Paramount to the final quality. Harvest your precious buds in the dark, just before the lights normally come on. If possible, do not allow the plants to see direct light as long as their roots are attached. Direct light on a plant will draw up stored starches and sugars from the root system.
During the nighttime hours, our ladies are busy storing food down in their root system that they made during the daylight hours. During “lights out,” starches and sugars produced by photosynthesis during the day drain downward to the roots. Knowing this, it is easy to figure out that you want to cut your plants away from the roots before the lights come on, when food moves back upward into the buds.
Outdoor herb is often harvested during the daytime hours and the result is a harsh, difficult burn and an extra long cure. The starches and sugars present in daytime-harvested herb act like fire retardants—not the effect we’re looking for. In addition to tasting and burning bad, these fire retardants also change the chemical make up of the smoke you’re ingesting. This means that the THC, cannabinol, cannabidoil and other active cannabinoids can’t burn at the perfect temperature to get you properly high because they haven’t properly converted to their psychoactive forms.
Facts on Drying & Curing
• During the drying of marijuana buds, THC is converted from an acidic, non-psychoactive chemical into a neutrally based, psychoactive form that gets you high. This is why fresh marijuana is generally weaker than properly dried and cured buds.
• Marijuana will lose approximately 75 percent of its weight during drying due to water evaporating from plant matter.
•Buds dried too fast will be frail and may start to crumble. Keep humidity between 45 and 55 percent in your drying room to prevent this and to help keep aroma and flavor locked in.
•Buds are done drying and ready for curing when stems snap when bent rather than just folding over.
Garrigan65
33 Likes
I’m wondering why you need to be stealthy during your whole harvest process as you say you’re not worried about the smell. I like to be stealthy during the whole growing AND harvesting/curing process. One of my girlfriend growers likes to say, “Only the paranoid survive.” I agree. I’m in Canada and have lots of friends in the States and we all agree that most parts of North America are still very Nazi repressive about weed. This is funny cause I’ve always heard on the News that California and BC where the world’s 2 biggest producing areas. But now I hear Australians not only are zee world’s biggest smokers (while its still illegal!) they also want to become legal AND the world’s biggest producer. Why? Because they never want to run out! No joke. Then I read that, to my surprise, the UK is zee world’s biggest growing country! Small size country, small population, so go figure! You never know…
So what does this all have to do with growing and harvesting stealthy? In Canada zee whole country is supposed to legal by this July 1st. But I’m never getting my commercial growers license cause I’m a girl and don’t trust the government—any government. Our young prime minster, Trudeau is a two-faced lying bastard. He says he’s smoked it with friends several times in his past, yet once weed is legal he still wants to raise the minimum sentence from 10 to 15 years if you’re busted from growing or selling without a license. So for me stealth is everything. I have two large grow-ops. One is in greenhouses in zee warm BC Rockies and the other is indoors in the vast basement of one of the biggest restaurants in zee Province. My Chinese friends who rent it to me hate the government too. We’re totally connected to several big dispensaries who buy our Buds licensed or not cause they can’t keep up with demand! So in both Ops I like to harvest, dry process and trim as fast as possible. I do this by turning zee whole thing upside down compared to how my male grower friends do things. Us girls pick all zee leaves off first in zee last week of flower and just leave on the little sugar leaves stuck on zee Buds. Then to harvest, we snap off the green Buds right from the growing plant. While zee Buds are drying we pull the green stalks and stems and feed them to our horses. Then we by-pass zee whole hand-trimming process with our handy Tom’s Tumble Trimmer dry auto-trimming machines. These puppies have no blades and no complex machinery to jam up or break down to stall out the process and we can trim over a 100 lbs. in day, no lie! And they’re silent running too—stealth , stealth stealth! Our dispensary friends say our Buds look exactly like hand-trimmed but we don’t have to pay a fortune for hand-trimmers who you can never trust to rat us out to zee government! That’s Girl Power for ya! Love you guys!
Slipperyslut
16 Likes
hello @garrigan62 I’ve printed your posting for quick reference, thank you.
I have a question: if a plant is hung upside down, wouldn’t the moisture all go to the buds? Perhaps that’s a good thing because maybe it offers the moisture more egress points than if it was in a stem… If I was to figure a way to hang the branches so that they are in their natural growing position with stems down, wouldn’t that assist in the drying process? I have my first plant ready for chopping and hanging later today, or tomorrow morning, its an Emperor J strain. I will hang it upside down as for conventional wisdom, I was just wondering why they get hung upside down, thanks and I appreciate all the help you and others on this forum gave me through the entire first grow.
@Stryder1961
I hope this helps
I dry mine as slowly as possible, 3-4 weeks is not unusual, and during curing I’m still venting jars 6 weeks into it. I hang my stuff to dry in the coldest place I can find that isn’t damp or doesn’t condensate much. Works for me, nice smooth smoke, no coughing, no harshness at all.
Back on topic, maybe ripping and hanging your whole plant roots and all upside down keeps it alive a little longer so it can grow that last 0.00001g of extra bud or makes it spazz out and produce some extra resin or something in an attempt to live a little longer. , I think it makes it all dry slower, which IMO makes for a smoother smoke, thus enabling bigger bong rips and therefore much higher hippies. Maybe.
Drying: How to Dry Marijuana Properly
If you prepare your marijuana buds the proper way, you will ensure the smoothest, best-tasting result.
After you have cut off and trimmed all of your buds, you will want to hang them upside down in a cool. dark place with plenty of ventilation so that they can dry out.
Make sure to space your buds evenly without touching each other so they can dry out properly without molding.
Any sort of moisture during the drying process is your enemy because it can cause mold.
An easy way to hang your buds is pin them to coat hangers using clothes pins and simply hand the coat hangers in a closet.
Your marijuana buds are ready for the next stage of the drying/curing process once you can use your thumb to gently bend a bud, and you get a dry, crackley snapping from the bud. Basically, you want to make sure that your buds have dried all the way to the center.
When the buds still have moisture in the center, their stems will bend without breaking when you apply pressure to the stem. Once the plants are ready, their stems snap off cleanly when you try to bend them.
You want to be careful of over-drying or your weed will crumble when you try to break it up. If this happens, you can mist the bud with water and hang them to dry again, but, bud seems to cure best if you dry it out slowly one time, and re-misting also means there is a greater opportunity for mold to grow.
Curing The Weed
Why Do We Need to Cure Marijuana Buds?
The purpose of curing is to improve the quality and taste of your buds when you smoke it.
Almost all marijuana enthusiasts agree that the best smell and flavor is obtained after the marijuana has been cured for some length of time.
Many growers, including me, also believe that curing your buds for at least 2-4 weeks actually improves the apparent potency.
This may be due to changes that happen to the cannabinoids during the curing process.
However, curing for more than 6 months does not continue to add potency. I personally cure buds for 1-3 months.
How to Cure Your Dried Buds:
To cure your freshly dried buds, just put them in a tightly-closed jar in a cool dark place.
A mason jar works great.
You may want to open the jars once a day for a couple of seconds to get fresh air in your jars and release any moisture.
In most cases, some moisture was likely still stored in the stems of your buds, even after buds seemed dry.
Once you start curing the buds, any remaining moisture will spread out evenly through the plant and come to the surface. You know this has happened when you check on curing buds, and they seem like they’re moist again.
This is why it’s so important to regularly check on your buds as they’re curing and drying, and this is part of why it’s essential you’re “burping” the jars regularly.
Many growers don’t check, and buds which get moist will end up growing mold and ruining your crop just before it’s ready. Yuck.
If you are burping your plants and notice they’re moist, then leave the jar completely open for about 12 hours to allow them to dry out a bit more.
When you check back, once they feel dry again, then close the jar again and continue the curing process as normal. Continue checking regularly to make sure that you always release any extra moisture that accumulates.
When you dry plants slowly like this, you get the absolute best results.
After you buds have been curing for 1-2 weeks, you can start opening the lid once a week instead of once a day.
If you open the jar and it smells really funky (not a good funky), their may be hidden moisture in some of your buds which may not have dried completely and could be in the beginning stages of growing mold due to the moisture.
This especially tends to happen with big fat buds that were cut off the main cola.
If this happens to you, try hanging the funky pieces of bud to dry for two more days before putting it back in the jar.
Some people only cure their bud for 1-2 weeks total while other cure their bud for 30 days or more. Because you need to open the jar regularly, you can always sample some as it’s curing to get a feel for whether it’s done or not.
Different people have different preferences, but luckily you can ‘test out’ your buds at any stage of curing, to figure out what works best for you.
18 Likes
Thank you… I’m in no hurry, will adhere to the patient method… love this stuff, thanks
@garrigan62 hello. I cut and hung my Emperor Jack Herer plant on Monday morning. I cut the plant into about 20-30 pieces and hung them on a line in a spare room. I did not get the humidity right, it was too low, around 33 for the first two days until I clued in… I put a humidifier in there, and its now about 48-52, with a temp of 64. I think the harvest is dry now, should I continue to dry it for another week with the proper humidity, or have I lost the advantage of a slow dry already? That being to remove the chlorophyll. Thanks
If you can snap the twig or stock than ya time for the mason jar. and I don’t think you have lost anything.
At four to five days into the dry, the tips of some buds might be dry enough to pluck off and
sample. After the buds have gone through their full cycle of drying, we want to slow the whole
thing down and draw the rest of the moisture out very gradually. This is the curing process.
What’s the Cure?
If your herb is harvested correctly, there is very little need for long cures. Long cures are
needed to make harsh herb smoke smoother. If you start out with smooth, clean herb, there’s
less need for long cures. Most buds should be cured and ready to smoke in less than two weeks
after the drying period. Expert growers who harvest properly can complete curing in five or
six days, but a good average can easily range from 10 to 14 days.
Inexperienced growers often tend to get impatient and only cure for a few days, but this can
be a costly mistake when it comes to potency. Allowing the buds to cure evenly, which means
drying at a slower rate, removes moisture within the buds so that all the THC can be converted
in its psychoactive form.
The curing process evens out the moisture levels in the herb. You want the same amount of
moisture in the center of the buds as you do on the outside of the buds until they are almost
totally devoid of fluids. Completely drying the herb too fast can trap moisture in the middle
and not allow for a proper cure.
For the curing process, you want to put the half-dried buds into air-tight containers. Inside
the container, the buds will become evenly moist, inside and out, as they begin to “sweat.”
You can check to see if your buds are sweating and releasing moisture by gently squeezing
them between your fingers to see if they feel damper than they did a few hours before sealing
them up. Glass jars with rubber seals and lockdown lids are the best option for curing, but
for large amounts of harvested buds, you’ll need something much bigger. Tight-sealing rubber
or plastic bins are the best option for large quantities of buds but many growers feel these
containers impart a plastic-type taste onto the buds. This can be offset by adding a small
slice of lemon or orange peel to the bins toward the end of your cure.
Once the buds are again evenly moist, open the containers to let the moist air exchange with
fresh air. Air exchanges are essential to the curing process. Not only do they prevent
condensation from forming in your curing bins, but the fresh air is drier than the air you
just allowed to escape from the container. The moisture still trapped in the herb will again
slowly escape and moisten the new, fresh air. Open the container several times a day to
exchange the moistened air with fresh air to slowly draw out the moisture in the buds.
Eventually (again, one to two weeks) the moisture level in the herb will be at the right
level to stash away and, of course, smoke!
What Time of Day to Harvest?
Timing the harvest is Paramount to the final quality. Harvest your precious buds in the dark,
just before the lights normally come on. If possible, do not allow the plants to see direct
light as long as their roots are attached. Direct light on a plant will draw up stored starches
and sugars from the root system.
During the nighttime hours, our ladies are busy storing food down in their root system that
they made during the daylight hours. During “lights out,” starches and sugars produced by
photosynthesis during the day drain downward to the roots. Knowing this, it is easy to
figure out that you want to cut your plants away from the roots before the lights come on,
when food moves back upward into the buds.
Outdoor herb is often harvested during the daytime hours and the result is a harsh,
difficult burn and an extra long cure. The starches and sugars present in daytime-harvested
herb act like fire retardants—not the effect we’re looking for. In addition to tasting and
burning bad, these fire retardants also change the chemical make up of the smoke you’re
ingesting. This means that the THC, cannabinol, cannabidoil and other active cannabinoids
can’t burn at the perfect temperature to get you properly high because they haven’t properly
converted to their psychoactive forms.
Facts on Drying & Curing
• During the drying of marijuana buds, THC is converted from an acidic, non-psychoactive
chemical into a neutrally based, psychoactive form that gets you high. This is why fresh
marijuana is generally weaker than properly dried and cured buds.
• Marijuana will lose approximately 75 percent of its weight during drying due to water
evaporating from plant matter.
•Buds dried too fast will be frail and may start to crumble. Keep humidity between 45 and 55
percent in your drying room to prevent this and to help keep aroma and flavor locked in.
•Buds are done drying and ready for curing when stems snap when bent rather than just folding over.
•Air exchanges during curing should occur every four or five hours with curing bins left open for
10 minutes at a time.
7 Likes
I agree . if drying to fast or with a high temp than the snoking is hursh , and also I read aresearch that the thc and cbd percent is lower .
I use WEDRYER this way I dry evenly and most important @Whyteboy1994 , IT FILTER THE ODOR
1 Like
Thanks for sharing. Hoping it was a cut and paste lol. I’m going too feed a little xtra this week and cut in 3 weeks. Can’t wait
I saw earlier in this post someone said about not liking putting buds in cardboard boxes and paper bags. i worked at a farm market for 4 years and we sent all our peaches out in paper bags because there is a chemical in the bags that helps in the curing of fruits. just wondering if it has the same effect on pot and if it does it might make it cure too fast.
It’s not a chemical in the bag itself that makes the fruit ripen. When most fruits ripen, they produce ethylene gas. Ethylene gas in itself encourages fruit to ripen. When you put them in a bag, it holds the ethylene gas in and makes the fruit ripen even more. You can use this technique to (for example) buy green Bartlett pears and watch them turn yellow and juicy in just a couple of days.
The paper bag technique for pot is a popular drying technique, but is not used for curing. I’ve tried it and it works very well.
3 Likes