Hey Guys,
Last time I checked in I had just cut down my second girl. It has been hanging for 11 days and I've gone ahead and cut it up and jarred it for the cure. On the 9th day of hanging the buds felt a bit too crisp so, as someone else in this thread suggested, I hung a trash bag over her for 24 hours which made the buds a little softer to the touch and brought a bit of the nice smell out.
**Note: I decided to trim the sugar leaves I left on around day 7, they were just too dry and getting to the 'crumble' stage. Going forward I will be trimming all sugar leaves the day I cut the plant down. Its just too tedious to trim the buds when all the leaves are dry and curled- too many mishaps with chopping into buds! I will leave all the buds on the plant, fully trimmed, to dry for 10-21 days (whenever it feels right- this is totally contingent on the size of the buds- My plants are 2-3 feet tall and all topped so the buds aren't huge. If I were to aim for big buds the dry is obviously longer).
Temp: 60-65 degrees
RH: 60% (on some days I aired out the room which brought RH down to 50/55 temporarily)
*Hung in the dark, only light received is from a CFL in the ceiling when I would walk in to check on her.
After 11 days of hanging my plant has these characteristics:
Buds dry to the touch
Buds don't have much of a smell, there is a very very subtle 'green' smell but it is nothing compared to what it was for the 10 days prior to jarring.
Stems have shrunk probably by 80%
Stems bend and ALMOST break, essentially on the precipice of being too dry.
At this point I've jarred the buds and will burp for 20 minutes every day or every other day depending on how much moisture I deem to be in the buds- I doubt there is much so planning on burping every other day for 2/3 weeks.
I will follow up with you guys on this thread once the cure is complete and will let you know the results of the smoke!