It takes a lot of time and a lot of care to grow weed. When you smell those fragrant buds, it is time to harvest your marijuana plants.
However, your work is still not finished. Drying cannabis is just as important as cultivating it.
How you go about curating your buds can have a strong impact on the weed. You cannot wait to try the high of your newly grown weed but you have to be patient. You need a marijuana dryer help you.
Properly grown, dried and cured flowers burn smoothly and taste flavorful. The smell and flavor come from the terpenes and flavonoids in the buds. Terpenes also contribute to the strain’s specific effects.
For buds to be proud of, think “low and slow.” Drying and curing flowers takes time and patience, but the finished buds are worth the wait.
”Low” refers to temperature. Terpenes evaporate at different temperatures, and some at slightly below room temperature. When the air is fragrant with flower odors, the buds are losing their terpenes. Improperly dried and cured buds lose terpenes due to evaporation.
For example, the terpene myrcene — found in mango fruit, hops, bay leaves, eucalyptus, lemongrass and cannabis — evaporates at just 68º F (20º C). In addition to contributing to the smell, myrcene has analgesic, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-depressant and anti-anxiety properties and helps THC cross the blood/brain barrier. Terpenes are essential to cannabis consumers. Buds must be dried at low temperatures for the terpenes to be preserved. Drying at low temperatures and moderate humidity takes longer, hence “low and slow.”
Drying is as important as growing, and a bad drying process can ruin even the best buds.
Drying marijuana means reducing the water content of the buds to 10-15%, depending on the desired crispiness of the final product.
Most commercial growers do not cure their crop; they just dry it and sell it.
Curing is a long but necessary step toward the highest possible quality of the smoke. For the real connoisseur, curing is the essence of it all, the culminating moment towards the perfect result.
There are many ways to cure and dry, but the method I like best is to use a climate-controlled room.
The room should be lit using special green fluorescents or LEDs, because the green spectrum does not affect the plant material.
The temperature and the humidity must be constantly controlled and adjusted, and the air exchange needs to be calibrated exactly to the desired volume.
First, it is important to mention that the best way of drying marijuana is to hang them upside down. This will cause all the remaining water, nutrients, and energy that is still left in the plant to flow down to the flowers which are the last place to dry. With the plants’ hanging upside down to dry, it improves the aroma and the flavor of the finished buds.
The second primary factor is the drying time. If you will dry your cannabis plants quickly, then the outside portion of the flower will become dehydrated and crisp. The internal portion will stay damp moist and damp. This is not good because you need to aim for balance. If you drying your cannabis plants too slowly, this is not also good because it will be highly at risk to mold and mildew, most especially if the humidity levels are very high.
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Once your plants are ready to be harvested, it is time to start the curing process. I find cutting a foot long branch from the bud the best. Even though you can manicure the branch after drying, it is better to just do it before as you do not want any leaves hampering the drying process. You will need trimming scissors or a bud trimming machine at this point to get rid of all unwanted leaves in the bud.
If you are using a drying rack instead of a hanging line, you can directly cut the buds and trim them, you will need a trim tray. You can fully manicure even after drying. You do not have to spend a lot of time manually trimming them. This is why you should opt for a bud trimming machine instead.
Once you have manicured the buds, move them to a dark room. Now, you do not need any sunlight or grow lights at all.
This darkroom needs to meet the temperature and humidity requirements. You can use a dehumidifier to keep humidity within 45-55%.
The temperature needs to be between 60° F (15.5° C) and 70° F (21°C). If the room already has this temperature then you do need to do anything. Otherwise, use an air conditioner to maintain the temperature in the said range. You can use a small fan to improve the circulation of air.
Usually, it can take anywhere from 5 to 15 days for the buds to dry a bit.
You can tell just by looking if it has dried provided you have been growing weed for a while.
When the flowers are a bit crispy and the branch snaps, the buds have dried enough and are ready to be cured.
Now, to complete the curating process and to completely dry the buds you need to store them in an airtight container.
You can store them in canning jars of plastic or glass. You can even store them in plastic bags; however, it is a bit risky. Do not pack too many flowers in one bag.
You will need to open the jar for a bit several times at least for a week. This allows any remaining moisture out and lets some fresh air in. From the second week, you can open every few days. After 2 to 3 weeks, the weed will be fully cured.
The more time you spend drying cannabis the better the result is.
If at any point after storing you get an ammonia smell, know that you did not properly follow the steps of how to dry pot. Chances are that bacteria have already gotten to them, hence the smell.
Make sure to check if it has properly dried before storing them.
The proper method of drying cannabis is time-consuming but delivers the result you want.
If you know how to dry marijuana on your own you will always grow high-quality weed.
Honestly speaking, this one aspect of growing weed that is overlooked pretty easily. Every grower is so focused on growing marijuana that they forget how to properly dry weed after harvesting it.
There are so many domestic growers of weed in addition to commercial marijuana dispensaries that you have to do everything you can to stand out. By the way, ECO Farm weed Dryer can be your great choice.
The whole drying and curating pot process can take 4 to 8 weeks. Some even expand this process to 6 months to get even better strains. In the end, it is up to you how you go about drying your own weed.