How I dry/cure my harvest

chuckeye

Well-Known Member
Greetings,

Hopefully some might find this useful !

To start I feed right up to harvest.

IMO starving doesn't provide any benefit. I believe the plant gets more benefit from available nutrients than from cannibalizing it's leaves.

My last watering is three days before chop. Up till the week before they were taking a gallon every two days in 3 gallon fabric pots with ProMix HP.

Harvest is when ALL the white pistils have turned color and receded. AND the trichomes are all at least cloudy/white, some amber is good.

I chop when lights normally come on, no dark period other than regular lights off.

My last crop I wet trimmed on the plant, seemed to be quite a bit faster.

Then I cut off the branches and hang in the dark. Best I could do was 45% RH and 70 degrees. A suggested ideal is 50-60/60.

I had a staggered harvest so I built a frame and threw a tarp over it ;)

And had a 50cfm fan blowing in. Takes six to seven days for the buds to feel "crispy", I never did get the hang of the "snap the branch" thingee..

KG & GG#4 hanging.jpg

Cut the buds off the branches and loose fill a food grade container to at least 3/4's full. Anything less is too much air.

OR multiple jars, your choice :cool:

Pop in a hygrometer (less than $20 for 5 off Amazon) and check it the next day. Takes a while to get a good reading as the crispy parts will absorb moisture from the bud interiors.

Ideally it won't be over 70. If it is leave the top off the contain for a half hour, three times a day. Much over 70% is mold area and I would either paper bag it or lay it out on newspaper for a while. You will get the hang of this part, no pun intended !

It's handy to have an extra container the same size. Place on top of the original and flip. This is less harsh than fluffing up the buds and gives the bottom of the container access to the burp.

When RH is in the high 60's burp the container twice a day for a couple of minutes until it reaches 58%.

Hopefully this will take at least two weeks.

Curing KG & GG.jpg

Then I vacuum seal in 1 L mason jars with a 58%/size 8 Bovida pack.

Some prefer 62% but 58% works best for me to grind for joints or pipe.

The KEY to a good cure is paying attention to the RH !

Gelato auto.

Gelato.jpg

Purple Silverback auto.

Purple Silverback.jpg

Please feel free to add your comments/alternatives to this method.

Cheers
 

lemmis

Well-Known Member
I'm always looking for a better way to cure. I can grow great bud but my curing is terrible. I think I wait too long to get them into jars and haven't tried the mini hydrometer's yet. So going to try and get them in jars a bit sooner and add the mini hydrometer's so I know where I'm at. Thanks for your posting, everybodies advice helps the curing retarded such as myself. Here's a pic of my purple punch outdoors in NC, U.S. happy growing
 

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deadbeet

Member
Greetings,

Hopefully some might find this useful !

To start I feed right up to harvest.

IMO starving doesn't provide any benefit. I believe the plant gets more benefit from available nutrients than from cannibalizing it's leaves.

My last watering is three days before chop. Up till the week before they were taking a gallon every two days in 3 gallon fabric pots with ProMix HP.

Harvest is when ALL the white pistils have turned color and receded. AND the trichomes are all at least cloudy/white, some amber is good.

I chop when lights normally come on, no dark period other than regular lights off.

My last crop I wet trimmed on the plant, seemed to be quite a bit faster.

Then I cut off the branches and hang in the dark. Best I could do was 45% RH and 70 degrees. A suggested ideal is 50-60/60.

I had a staggered harvest so I built a frame and threw a tarp over it ;)

And had a 50cfm fan blowing in. Takes six to seven days for the buds to feel "crispy", I never did get the hang of the "snap the branch" thingee..

View attachment 5139128

Cut the buds off the branches and loose fill a food grade container to at least 3/4's full. Anything less is too much air.

OR multiple jars, your choice :cool:

Pop in a hygrometer (less than $20 for 5 off Amazon) and check it the next day. Takes a while to get a good reading as the crispy parts will absorb moisture from the bud interiors.

Ideally it won't be over 70. If it is leave the top off the contain for a half hour, three times a day. Much over 70% is mold area and I would either paper bag it or lay it out on newspaper for a while. You will get the hang of this part, no pun intended !

It's handy to have an extra container the same size. Place on top of the original and flip. This is less harsh than fluffing up the buds and gives the bottom of the container access to the burp.

When RH is in the high 60's burp the container twice a day for a couple of minutes until it reaches 58%.

Hopefully this will take at least two weeks.

View attachment 5139129

Then I vacuum seal in 1 L mason jars with a 58%/size 8 Bovida pack.

Some prefer 62% but 58% works best for me to grind for joints or pipe.

The KEY to a good cure is paying attention to the RH !

Gelato auto.

View attachment 5139126

Purple Silverback auto.

View attachment 5139127

Please feel free to add your comments/alternatives to this method.

Cheers
Very helpful post. Thanks for taking the time to lay it out, especially w/ some specific numbers re: temp and humidity. I'm a little curious about the hairs (pistils?) I see in your photos. Most folks, yourself included, encourage waiting until pistils have receded. How do so many wind up on your finished bud then? Is it that they don't fully recede? I harvested some Bruce Banner last week (Northern Midwest outdoor grow; threats of frost already) and while they pistils hadn't receded they had changed color to brown. I'm nervous I'll wind up with the "hay" odor but judging by some of your photos my buds don't look very different. Any thoughts? Thanks again.. great post.
 

chuckeye

Well-Known Member
Very helpful post. Thanks for taking the time to lay it out, especially w/ some specific numbers re: temp and humidity. I'm a little curious about the hairs (pistils?) I see in your photos. Most folks, yourself included, encourage waiting until pistils have receded. How do so many wind up on your finished bud then? Is it that they don't fully recede? I harvested some Bruce Banner last week (Northern Midwest outdoor grow; threats of frost already) and while they pistils hadn't receded they had changed color to brown. I'm nervous I'll wind up with the "hay" odor but judging by some of your photos my buds don't look very different. Any thoughts? Thanks again.. great post.
Thank you...

Perhaps you are taking the term "receded" too literally.

The pistils will turn color and crinkle up (a highly technical term) but they won't go away :mrgreen:

And the "hay" odor is usually from drying and curing too fast which doesn't give the chlorophyll time to break down.

This doesn't relate to "when" the plant is harvested.

Chlorophyll has a half life of two days. So if possible hang and dry as close to 60%rh/60 degrees as possible for at least a week, longer is better.

When the outside of the buds feel dry, put some in a container with a hygrometer over night. It should Not be any higher than 70% in the morning.

Good luck !

Cheers
 
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