Question about the conventional wisdom

Everything you read about growing, harvesting and enjoying your plants has a sentence like this one: "After you're done manicuring the buds, be sure to save the trimmed leaves to make honey oil, hash or canna butter".

I've made honey oil and really enjoy the taste and effect. I have absolutely nothing against honey oil or any other canna-by-products. But back in the day -- way, way back -- we used to smoke grass with nothing but leaves. There might be a bud or two mixed in your baggie, but mainly it was leaves. And I got high as a kite off them. Everybody did. I don't remember a lot about the late 1960s , but I do remember that I enjoyed the hell out of smoking this supposedly 'inferior' stuff.

So my question is: Have we all become 'Bud Snobs'? Is confining beautiful marijuana leaves to the butane-tube, or the cannabutter-boiler, really the only appropriate way to use them? Can't we just smoke 'em like in the good old days?

Does anyone here harvest, trim-off, dry and cure their bud leaves the same way they do their buds? [Not talking shade leaves here, just the smaller top leaves, coated with trichomes, that surround and protect the buds]

I'd be interested in hearing what rollitup.org members think about 'Bud Snobbery' -- whether you're an old fart like me, or a youngster who's never smoked anything but primo bud.

Bud snobs exist but for the most part growers tend to find that they have a LOT of bud to go round, so there's no need to smoke anything but the top rate product off the plant. I think this is why people go down one of two paths either getting creative with how they use their leaves etc. or deciding not to bother with them at all.

I smoke leaf every now and then but to me there's no contest between a leaf and a nice stinking bud, that's why I'd rather use my leaves for more "fun" methods like brownies, cookies, oils and so on.

Let's face it, growing techniques and the actual strains themselves have come a long way since the '60s, people have looked to maximise harvest and make stronger plants for a long time and the effects show.

Welcome to RIU you old fart, lol. From one to another I have to agree things seem to have come a long long way from back in the day. They can say all they want about most of the new strains and they wouldn't hold up to what we had before the War on Drugs and hence all the money it made everybody.
I don't smoke leaf anymore but I still do what I have always done with them. Chopping them up fairly fine and placing in a large glass bowl and sit in a warm airy place. Turn a daily and once they start to crisp take a razor blade and lightly chop and run through a screen or two letting the fines fall through. I use a little bit of pipe tar to get ball started. I have tried all the other ways this is just the way I was taught and it seems to fit my personal style (just a poor ole dumbfuc* countryboy from the swamps of north florida).
Bud snobs, yeah to a large degree I think there is alot of that but everyone I have ever known that grew a cash crop was a bud snob but in a good natured way. But seedbanks today make it easy for that to happen. The old sativas at times had little tiny buds all airy and potent has hell. Well, I am overmedicated now and must stop my ramble.
To old farts who still grow

Cruster-in-training weighs in

The pot I got as a teen (I grew up in a major metro area within an hour of the Bay, ~wave!~) was the standard leafy "colombian" that went for $40. a 'z (called them ozies) back in the 70s. Honestly, the bud I see nowadays is more potent but no more efficacious ... the high I'd get from smoking enough of that old-time boo was quite full-service.
Now I smoke oil exclusively when I'm by myself. Bong hits and reefers are nice in a social setting when someone has pure punchy bud, but when I'm doing my solo thing I do love the refined stuff. It's easy for me to measure onto my screen; it tastes so very nice, and ... one hit and that's it! cn

Sorry if the term 'Bud Snob' came across as perjorative. Certainly didn't intend that. I love buds. And Honey oil. It's just that the idea that top-leaf is scrap, to be thrown away or turned into something else, goes against the fondest memories of my youth.

I've never been in the position Noobface describes of having LOTS of bud to go around. I've generally been a search-under-the-couch-for-a-loose-morsel kind of guy. Now I'm at the end of my first successful outdoor grow -- just a few bagseed sativas for personal consumption. Expect them to yield a couple gallon canisters of dry cured bud [along with a nice stash of top-leaf that I doubt I'll be able to throw away].

Maybe then I'll become a Bud Snob too -- but an Old Fart Bud Snob, the very best kind.

stems and seeds , seeds popping and burning the seats in your car , shit yea i don't want to go back to the shit i used to smoke so yes i am a smoke snob i grow my own

Sometimes I cure the leaves in water and smoke them. They are a nice smoke and potent but you have to smoke more than you would buds.

But as Noobface points out, you end up with so much MJ that you can afford to be very picky. There's also a storage issue. Leaves are bulky, hash is very compact.

Haha! I am sure you wouldn't have a prob finding Kansas catnip around here lol... Would I want it? Well maybe for a concert at 40 a zone lol...