Cannabis harvesting, drying and curing

The outdoor growing season is approaching its natural conclusion after months of hard work, and finally, the long-awaited moment has arrived when you can savor the fruits of your labor. However, it's crucial to bear in mind that lack of experience or the temptation to enjoy the delicious blooms as quickly as possible can compromise the results.

Always remember that proper harvesting, careful plant care, and thorough drying are just as vital as the hard work you've invested in the past months. If you've successfully made it to this final stage without issues, it's now of utmost importance not to rush. Instead, you can bring the outdoor season to a successful close by following the following simple steps carefully.

How to prepare a drying area for cannabis:
Selecting the optimal location for drying your cannabis plants plays a pivotal role in achieving the best possible quality from your buds. Ideally, the drying room should have the following features:

Ventilation: Adequate air exchange is essential. If you activate your ventilation system (inlet and exhaust) for about five minutes every two hours, you can ensure sufficient fresh air intake. This supports the drying process and prevents mold formation.
Privacy: If you wish to protect your cannabis harvest from prying eyes, choosing a discreet location is crucial. Additionally, it's recommended to use an effective odor filtration system. During manicuring and drying, the scent of the cannabis plants can be particularly intense, making odor control essential.
Temperature: The room temperature should not exceed 27°C, as beyond this point, some crucial cannabinoids begin to break down. It's also advisable to minimize temperature fluctuations as much as possible.
Light: It's important to keep the drying room as dark as possible, as prolonged exposure to light can promote THC degradation. Light and water are the two primary factors that can alter the composition and quality of cannabis flowers.
Humidity: The right humidity level (around 45-55%) is crucial. Excessive humidity in the drying room can promote the growth of mold and fungi, jeopardizing the harvest. Too low humidity, on the other hand, causes the flowers to dry too quickly, depriving them of sufficient time for desired metabolic processes, leading to buds with a somewhat "plant-like taste."

These factors significantly contribute to ensuring your cannabis buds are optimally dried and of the highest quality. Pay close attention to these aspects to ensure your harvest meets the desired standards.

Before the cannabis harvest:
If you've used flower pots for cultivating your plants, it's crucial to thoroughly rinse the roots to ensure no fertilizer residues remain on the plants. These residues can not only affect the taste of your cannabis buds but can also be harmful to your health. It's important to remember that everything you've supplied to your plants ultimately enters your body when you consume the cannabis. Therefore, we strongly advise against using chemical fertilizers or pesticides, as they can harm not only the environment but also your health.

Even if you've used organic fertilizers, the plants should not accumulate excess mineral salts or other nutrients. For this reason, we recommend using only water for watering the plants approximately two to three weeks before the harvest. This step ensures that your harvest is free from unwanted residues and guarantees the quality of the cannabis products you will ultimately consume.

What you need for the harvest of your cannabis plants:
Once you've prepared the room for drying your cannabis plants, it's time to prepare the space for the upcoming trimming. Choose a table where you'll perform the trimming and make sure this place is as comfortable as possible. Manual trimming of about half a kilogram of cannabis buds typically takes around 6 to 8 hours to do properly.

To ensure you are well-prepared for trimming, it's advisable to create a list of essential trimming materials. These include:

Suitable scissors, which can be significantly helpful. We recommend special precision scissors for trimming or retractable garden shears for precise cuts.
Powder-free latex gloves, which help maintain cleanliness during the process while protecting your hands from unwanted residues.

The Harvest
Choosing the right time for harvesting your marijuana plants is crucial for the quality of your entire yield. Regardless of the phase in the life cycle of your cannabis plants when you decide to harvest, there is a golden rule: the best time for harvesting is always in the morning or, in the case of indoor cultivation, immediately after turning on the lights.

This timing is strategically chosen because plants optimize their resin production during the night. Resin contains many of the sought-after cannabinoids and terpenes that significantly influence the quality and effects of your cannabis buds. By conducting your harvest in the morning or when the lighting starts, you have the best chance of achieving the highest possible concentration of these valuable compounds.

For those interested in learning more about the optimal harvest timing, you can click here.

So, it's essential to carefully plan the harvest time to ensure you get the most out of your plants and obtain high-quality cannabis products.

Here are the steps for harvesting and preparing your cannabis buds:

Begin by cutting each branch with flowers at the node, with the node being the point where a branch connects to another branch or the main stem. Before harvesting each branch, you should inspect the trichomes on the entire plant. Sometimes, the buds at the top develop faster than those lower on the plant, so it can occasionally be optimal to harvest them a bit later.
Carefully remove all fan leaves (the large leaves with multiple fingers) and excess stems from the buds.
Now is the time to decide whether you prefer > dry trimming or wet trimming.
If you opt for wet trimming, perform the manicure of your buds and save the trimmed sugar leaves for later use. You can store this leftover plant material to use for making cannabutter or extracts.

How to Dry Cannabis Plants:

Hang your trimmed buds in your prepared drying room. Attach a string or wire to the bottom of each branch and hang the branch and the flowers upside down. This promotes even drying. Ensure there's enough space between individual branches to maximize air circulation. Let the buds dry for a period of 10 to 14 days.
To ensure your buds are adequately dried, try bending the stems. If they break, your flowers are dry enough. If they bend, there is still too much moisture in the plant material.
If you choose to perform dry trimming, this is the appropriate time to do so.

After you've dried and trimmed your buds, they can now proceed to the curing process.

How to Cure Cannabis

For those who grow their own cannabis plants, it's no secret that a significant amount of effort and dedication is required to cultivate high-quality cannabis. This process demands a substantial amount of time and effort from start to finish, but the rewards are well worth it. Among the numerous steps in this process, curing is of crucial importance. If you aim to enjoy top-notch cannabis buds in the end, curing is absolutely essential.

Why Cure Cannabis?
Curing cannabis is not just an activity done by growers for fun and pleasure; it actually has concrete and measurable effects on the quality of the final product. After drying and trimming, cannabis buds are cured to maximize flavor, potency, and overall quality. Here are some of the primary reasons why curing cannabis is of vital importance:

A milder smoking experience: By breaking down chlorophyll and accentuating the terpenes, the smoke becomes significantly milder and more enjoyable.
Mold prevention: Curing removes any remaining moisture from inside the buds, greatly reducing the risk of mold formation.
Preservation of flavor and potency: Careful curing helps minimize the loss of flavor and potency, making the final product higher in quality and effectiveness.
Intensification of aromas: The aromas of cannabis buds become more pronounced during curing, enhancing the flavor experience, making it richer and more complex.

Tips and Techniques for Successful Cannabis Bud Curing
The initial step in curing your cannabis buds effectively is ensuring they have been properly dried and trimmed beforehand. Inadequately dried buds will impede the curing process, significantly increasing the risk of mold development.

The next crucial aspect is the choice of storage containers. Many cannabis growers favor Mason jars for curing due to their airtight and sturdy nature, allowing for a clear view inside the jar. When placing the flowers into the jars, they should be filled to about 75%, leaving ample room for air. You can gently shake them to check if any buds are sticking together. If they are, they need more drying time, so grant them extra time.

Now, it's time to store the jars in a cool, dark, and dry location. At this stage, the buds don't require as much attention, but during the first couple of weeks of curing, it's important to ensure proper air exchange. Open the curing jars daily for a few minutes in the initial two weeks to let fresh air in and release stale air. After this initial phase, it's no longer necessary to open the jars daily.

The entire curing process takes about four weeks, but many cannabis growers choose to let their buds cure for six weeks or longer. Therefore, patience is of paramount importance in this process.

The Significance of Humidity in Cannabis Curing
Humidity plays a crucial role in the success of the cannabis bud curing process. It's of utmost importance that humidity levels are neither too high nor too low, as this can have significant impacts on the final product. Excessively high humidity fosters mold formation, which should be strictly avoided. On the other hand, a very dry environment can result in brittle buds that are challenging to smoke.

But what is the ideal humidity for cannabis curing?
During the drying phase, the optimal relative humidity is around 45-55% to ensure an efficient drying process. During the curing phase, the recommended range increases slightly to approximately 58-62%. This elevation in humidity during curing helps achieve the perfect moisture level, thus preserving the desired qualities of the buds.

How can you control humidity during curing?
While a hygrometer cannot alter the humidity inside the storage jars, it can provide precise information about the humidity in your environment. Hygrometers are measuring devices that gauge humidity and are used in various household and commercial applications, including the curing of high-quality cannabis buds.

To ensure accurate readings, a hygrometer should remain in the curing container for at least two hours to adequately capture humidity values. As previously mentioned, the recommended range for relative humidity during the curing phase is 58-62%. This range helps maintain the ideal moisture level to preserve the desired characteristics and qualities of your buds.

In Conclusion
As you've already observed, the cannabis curing process isn't a complex endeavor. Admittedly, it requires time and patience, and if patience isn't your strong suit, the waiting can be a bit frustrating at times. However, the effort and waiting are undoubtedly worthwhile, both in terms of the overall quality of your buds and in preventing mold formation. Having the right knowledge about how to store cannabis for the long term is of great importance to keep your carefully dried buds in prime condition and full flavor for as long as possible.

Cannabis flower trimming: wet trimming vs. dry trimming

Cannabis can be pruned in two different ways, either when fresh (wet) or when dried. Alternatively, machine processing of the flowers is also possible. Different growers have their individual preferences, but ultimately all these methods lead to the same end result. In the following section, we will take a closer look at the procedures and the advantages and disadvantages of these different methods to help you decide which method best suits your needs.

How to Dry Trim Cannabis
Dry trimming is a process where manicuring is done after a one-week drying period. Once the large leaves are removed from the plants, they are hung upside down to dry for about a week. After this period, when most of the moisture has escaped from the buds, and the surrounding leaves are completely dried and brittle, manicuring can be done very carefully. Care should be taken to ensure that the bud parts do not accidentally fall off. It's worth noting that the small, trichome-covered sugar leaves can be set aside for later use, regardless of the chosen trimming technique, as they are ideal for making cannabis butter or extracts.

Dry trimming is particularly well-suited for situations where the drying room has low humidity or can be easily controlled. If humidity control is challenging or requires the purchase and use of expensive electrical equipment, wet trimming is often recommended. Setting up one or even several dehumidifiers can be problematic, especially in larger spaces, as they not only extract moisture from the air but also produce heat, which can accelerate the drying process and have unwanted effects. Hence, it's crucial to tailor the equipment precisely to local climate conditions. As mentioned earlier, maintaining a temperature between 18 and 23 °C and humidity between 55 and 65% is vital.

Advantages of Dry Trimming: Dry trimming helps preserve the taste and aroma of the buds. The flowers retain the small, resinous leaves ideal for making various extracts, and it maintains the flavor and aroma better. This slows down oxidation through the air and the associated metabolic processes, positively impacting quality.
Disadvantages of Dry Trimming: Dry trimming, if it leaves small leaves on the buds, can increase the risk of mold and fungus during drying. Additionally, there's a higher risk of accidentally cutting parts of the buds during manicuring. Proper equipment usage is also crucial to avoid unpleasant surprises from fungus infestation.

How to Wet Trim Cannabis
For wet trimming, start by wearing latex gloves to prevent resin from sticking to your hands and then gently begin the manicure. It's essential not to crush the buds. The plants don't need to be treated like porcelain, but a careful approach is necessary to avoid damaging the trichomes. Cut the larger leaves as close to the stems connecting them to the buds as possible, aiming for a deep cut. Leaving an excess of these leaves can promote mold formation. Afterward, trim the small leaves growing around the buds to achieve a clean and smooth end product.

Wet trimming offers the advantage of improved airflow throughout the entire plant mass, especially beneficial in high humidity environments where this method can protect against mold. If the humidity in the drying room is too high, you can also use dehumidifiers. However, it's essential to do this cautiously to maintain the ideal climatic balance. This means mild temperatures (18-23 °C) and humidity between 55% and 65%.

Advantages: Benefits include enhanced air circulation, making the drying process more manageable, and a reduced risk of various fungal diseases, particularly Botrytis (gray mold).
Disadvantages: With wet trimming, buds may not dry as uniformly as with dry trimming, potentially leading to a decrease in taste and aromatic quality compared to dry-manicured buds. Additionally, trichomes are more likely to be damaged, and if drying occurs too quickly, the necessary metabolic processes may not proceed correctly, resulting in a rough and somewhat unpleasant "plant taste" in the flowers.