First of all, Your not curing the buds, your drying them.
You have to wait til the buds are completely dry before you cure em'.
The way to tell if your buds are dry is when the stems/branches actually snap when you bend em.
Once their dry, you chop the buds in smaller pieces and place in mason jars loosely..
Every day you wanna open the jars for a few minutes and reseal..
After a few weeks of curing, the bud will start smelling good, and then its smokeable.
You have to stay patient if you want top notch smoke..
Curing makes all the difference in the world!!!!
Changes everything about your smoke... in a good way! Sure the buds are not all sticky and gummy, but should not turn to dust either (over dried). Cured buds (I break the big nugs down off two stems down, giving about gram sized buds for the most part) should easily come apart when rolled between two fingers. all smaller stems should snap and at least crack, if not completely break into two... I am talking the finest little innard ones. Also the greens should become very subtle and subdued compared to it even dried. Curing allows the terpenes, and other cannibinoids (when done properly), to reach final states, and peak potency. It also makes it burn smoother (as the chloroplasts and chlorophyll have completely broken down) and the cellulose dries out, thus burning with less other chemicals, and smoke. The flavors of some strains can change more dramatically than others when cured. Some can go from piney before curing to woody and smooth after. curing herb is a lot like aging wine or whisky (I spell it properly thank you... don't know what shit you are drinking that has an E added... unless the E adds margin of error... there is no substance made in america worthy of the title Whisky... what most people think of as american whiskEy is really bourbon... a whole other kind of booze) where it helps to mellow it out on the palate, and certain flavors stand out, at different stages/ages in curing. I prefer to cure my weed much the same way most people do, except I add some cedar strips from cigar boxes/tubes on top. Cedar helps to repel/kill any would be pests, and also has some other antimicrobial properties... in addition to what seems like it speeds it up a bit. Who knows, may just be the cedar helping to soften the palate slightly. But curing is def the way to go...
I have checked out damn near 100 various SoCal dispensaries, and ALL of their buds were only barely dried, with me getting into an argument with one place because that bud they were selling was too damn fresh... I mostly grow my own now. But before I started growing again (I did back in 'high' school...) I used my medical rec. at teh dispensaries. Well I once had a rare opportunity to pick up 2 ounces of top grade stuff for $350... one ounce I broke down and put into jars, which went into my 'Spice cabinet' with all my herb stuff. That ounce, plus a half of the other, i had in there for about 2 months... and i enjoy looking at my pot, smelling my pot, and just enjoying having lots of pot... so I would open the jars, take the buds out, put them back into the jars. This was before I knew about curing lol... well that stuff that sat for 2 months (had a hash connection come through with enough god various types of hash to last... well i still got some... and i LOOOOOOVEEEEE HASH!!!!) and was being looked at pretty much daily. Well during that time it cured, and the bright lime green faded to a more subdued almost gray-green color. The smell was much more earthy, yet still somewhat piney... with a definite yummy pot crispness to the scent. It may have lost almost 10% of it's weight (hey, means the weed is more potent) but it was 10x smoother than it was before... the effects also hit much quicker. I also noticed that in the bong, it left less resin than normal just dried bud. It also was easier to break up by hand to roll a J, and it burnt nice and smooth and even. It stays lit well, which, for bowls, can cause some problems for some people... or if smoking alone... but hey, I just pack smaller bowls, and sometimes like to push a challenge of how big a bowl I can kill in one good hit. Also because it lost that slight bit of moisture, it is also slightly more potent, because you are smoking that bit much more in each hit.
A side note about curing... True Afghani Blonde hash is made with marijuana that has been cured for at least 90 days. They wrap the buds in paper, and hang them up on their ceilings, or in jars without lids. The bud is wrapped tightly in several layers of paper, sometimes twisted so hard, that the cured bud looks like twisty pops. They also harvest when almost all the trichs turn amber. This curing helps make the sieving of the trichomes much easier, as the stalks have become severely weakened, and the gland heads dehydrate, leaving behind almost pure cannibinoids, which are easily removed. this also makes the bud less sticky, and thus production of a higher quality product easier. The reason that there was so much bunk ass blonde afghani hash in the day, is because greedy ass dealers were cutting it with all kinds of shit that was not weed... some dealers would use wax, and many other fillers... some shit was 90% filler. Also many manufacturers would also just add some dried brown leaves finely ground with some sugar rich water added to help bind.