Drying
Letting enough moisture evaporate from the buds to allow the weed to combust - so that you can inhale the smoke.
Curing
Allowing the life processes to continue in a regulated and controlled manner - to bring out the best qualities and most enjoyable flavours and smoking experience.
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Just because you've removed the branches from your plant, it doesn't mean that the bud is dead. It's still full of living microorganisms, which still have a life cycle and purpose to fulfil in the end quality of your weed.
The time to jar is when you can first bend a branch stalk, and have it 'start to snap'. Not snap clean in two, but more like a splinter snap like when you bend a match. That's normally around 3 to 5 days of hanging in a cool dark space.
Even if the outside of your buds feels a bit dry and 'almost ready to smoke', that's not the case, as the thicker and woodier branch stems will still be retaining moisture deeper inside. The purpose behind the jarring is to make a little sealed environment where those moisture levels will
slowly and steadily balance out and equalise. In other words, as the stems dry, that moisture will spread back into the drier outside bud.
What you are trying to achieve is to keep the environment right to keep a special bacteria alive that eats the chlorophyll in the green parts of the cells.
The chlorophyll is the hay or mown lawn grass smell, and
(1) that's what makes you cough from speed dried weed
(2) that's all you will taste instead of the sweet terpenes smell you really enjoyed as your crop got sticky and stinky as you came up to harvest time
Tons of info here on the subject.. use the search option at the top of you screen and you will have alot of threads at your finger tips.
+1
Read up and search around for tips and techniques.
The starting point is understanding the difference between
drying and
curing.
The life cycle of your grow does not end at harvest. Harvested bud is not dead inanimate matter, you need to keep it alive in supporting conditions.
Some folks reckon 25-30% of your end smoke quality lies in the curing process alone
- flavour
- strength
- quality and nature of the high
A good slow cure seals in the goodness. A rapid dry evaporates and degrades all the yumminess of the terpenes and cannabinoids you laboured and fought so hard to get your girls to produce.