Curing while hanging, never jarring buds..

So this method of drying and curing is one I have yet to come across on this website. Maybe I'm wrong but I'll share it anyways.

With this method you would leave the plants hanging for months and cut the buds as you smoke or sell them.

Step 1: You need a controlled drying area with 50% humidity and temps 65-75F. Needs to be dark or have indirect lighting and airflow but fans should not be directly on the buds.

Step 2: Trim all fan leaves and leaves without sugar upon harvest.

Step 3. Hang plants whole or by the branches. The plants will keep moisture in the stems and sugar leaves for months and months in a good environment.

Step 4: The plants are curing as they dry, after just 2 weeks of hanging they should be dry enough to sample. Cut off a bud and rip off those sugar leaves. The smell will come out and the buds will be dank to smoke.

Step 5. As you wait even longer the buds are at the perfect condition to cure, soon the whole hanging branch/plant will have near even moisture content. Cut and trim as needed and the bud will just be getting better and better. People think your plants will dry out and be ruined in like 2 weeks or so but this is only true in bad conditions.

The quick dry then slow cure in jar methods can technically reach the same end result but this is IMO a much better way to go. This is how it has always been done, drying and curing are one process, trimming all leaves immediately is the mistake.

i think buds end up harsh, crispy and tasting like green to me, just my opinion though, when you put it in a jar it slows the drying process down alot and allows for moisture to evenly flow throughout the bud, to each his own though

I don't see how buds would last hanging in that environment for months on end. Even when people leave all the leaves on their plants and hang as a whole it is hard to get it past a couple weeks without "over drying". I would think after a month the buds would turn to dust when you touch them?

What he said^^^^^ I would think that you're overdrying your buds and they wouldn't taste good, curing in jars is the name of the game, anyhow as one said " to each his own "

No it can be done what I am saying is if you are lucky enough to have a sealed room you can recreate the perfect curing conditions that would be in the jar but it's on the whole room. Keeping the sugar leaves and stems on the bud is the final buffer of moisture you need for this method. For long term storage I would jar it up but this is great for a month or two, which most people would have consumed or sold there crop by the end of.

Yep, I just recently cured a batch. After 3 days hanging, 4 days drying in brown bags, they were already crisp and very smokeable. I cant imagine how dry they would be hanging for a month.

Sure this can work but how many of us have a room we can seal off and then provide the correct RH in? You made yourself a room sized jar is what you did.

For curing, the container isn't important, providing the correct environment is. If you can do that in a room, great. But most of us use jars because we don't have a room we can dedicate to curing.

curing is about slowly pulling the moisture out, supposedly along with the green nitrogen flavor. Jarring is about further curing the bud, preserving some moisture, as well as protecting the bud from dust, mold spores, getting knocked around, light. It also keeps the tasty volatile oils in the bud and prevents or at least slows oxidation of thc.

The humidor room would work great for curing, but not nec for storage, especially long term.

i like the idea of handling the bud as little as possible. My last harvest, I dried whole, cured on the same clothesline with garbage bags, weighed large branches whole, trimmed, then went to jars. Subtracted weight of stems, trim, and popcorn at the end to get the weight of the jarred buds. This way, i didn't have to manually handle the buds more than i absolutely had to.

The other nice thing about jars is that if you fill them loosely to the top, you'll see them shrink up when they're ready. If they're sticky enough to clump together, the whole mass will pull away from the sides of the jar. This is more noticeable with rectangular jars.

minimal handling preserves potency by protecting trichs from mechanical trauma, but you still need to protect them from oxygen and airborne particles by sealing them up with minimal exposure to air somehow.

of course it would work technically a sealed room is like a big jar but once again as stated nothing beats the taste and texture of jarring up

Ok I guess I typed this kind of misleading. Look at it like this, you can immediately trim all leaves and then the bud will dry to ~65RH in like 3-7 days or so, then you slow dry(cure) in jars for 2-4 weeks before the bud is considered smoke-able Isn't this reaching the same goal as just hanging the plant whole with every leaf intact and it will take 4-6 weeks to fully dry and cure in which in can be jarred airtight to preserve that state. Besides it is easier to trim dry in my opinion, you don't have to deal with extremely sticky material on hands and scissors. Also the sugar leaves and fan leaves have folded over to protect the buds from dust and whatnot, now when the bud is dry enough that the stems snap and it's ready for jarring, the sugar leaves will cleanly break off at the base when you bend them back and all small stems will just snap off. You can still use scissors to cut the buds off the stem and clean them up. I made this post with the idea thinking most peoples buds here probably don't last long anyways. At least mine don't.

Why did I imagine that higher humidity and 90 degree temperatures are used to cure weed?

Maybe I am thinkingTobacco?



After doing some running around on the internet...

Slow CureNow that your initial drying is over you need to distribute the remaining moisture evenly through the bud because right now its all in the middle. You also might want to remove some more of that moisture and maybe some chlorophyll with it.
The traditional technique is the slow cure. With the slow cure you will put the material into a sealed container such as a glass jar or Tupperware container in the fridge until moisture rises from the center of the bud to the surface. When the buds feel moist you will sit them out in open air until they feel dry again and then repeat. The period of time before the moisture is drawn out will become increasingly longer. Most growers recommend curing for a minimum of two weeks. Generally medicinal grade cannabis can be stored for approximately 6 to 12 months before any degradation is noticed.
[h=3]Water Cure[/h]Water curing is an innovative idea. The resin in marijuana is not water soluble, so everything in the plant that is water soluble is an impurity. Water curing involves taking dry marijuana and submerging it in distilled (or at least not chlorinated) room temperature water (room temp is important, heat degrades potency and cold will make trichomes brittle). Change the water daily. This can be done for anywhere from 3-14 days and results in a dark chocolate brown marijuana. Wet marijuana and the same slow drying techniques should be used to remove the moisture from the marijuana the second time around to insure complete drying.
[h=3]Sweat Cure[/h]This is often done in impoverished nations with large commercial crops and is similar to how tobacco is commonly cured. Pile your buds into a pile of alternating layers. Shift around the buds periodically. This will cure and brown the marijuana quickly but is using heat to do it. This technique will reduce potency and helps breed harmful fungus and bacteria. For these reasons it is not recommended. it is also common among Jamaican and Rasta culturistic curing techniques. . .


I am VERY interested in the water cure......... Think I am going to try it on a little bit my next time...

Personally I hate trimming dry. When it's wet I can see and reach what I need to with the scissors.

As for the sticky stuff I wear latex gloves and well, who doesn't love scissor hash?