When the cannabis plants have finished their flowering period and are filled with resinous flowers, the best part comes, namely the harvest. Even if you are a beginner and have made some mistakes during your first or second grow, and this will affect the harvest to a certain extent, you can still be happy about certain results. The best way is to learn from your mistakes and improve over time, which is also an incentive for yourself.
Limitations in yields and quality are mostly related to small and silly mistakes. That's why it makes sense to get a lot of information - after all, information is power! If flowering has gone smoothly in the 8-10 weeks, fat and high-quality yields await the grower. It's important to note that the vast majority of strains need these 8-10 weeks of flowering, and some cannabis strains even longer, to fully and properly mature their buds.
Good drying and ripening is a crucial step in the production of high quality cannabis. A poor drying process can even ruin the whole quality of the cannabis buds. Drying and ripening the buds is sometimes quite a time-consuming and often a painful process of waiting for many medical growers. However, the wait is totally worth it, because you will get a much better taste and a more intense effect.
Trim buds when wet
There are different methods to harvest your beloved cannabis plants. Which one you use depends on the number of plants you have and their size. The most common method is to trim the weed while it is still wet. This involves removing the large leaves of the plants first. This can happen when the plant is still in the pot and before you cut it off. Then cut the cannabis plant at the bottom of the main stem and separate it into its side branches. Now, one after the other, remove all the medium-sized and not so very resinous leaves on the branches with pointed and sharp scissors. Always cut off the leaves at the very bottom of the stem so that no part of the stem remains in the flowers and possibly starts to mildew later.
Then the side branch is cut into the individual buds or cut off from the branches. Very large buds or the headbud should be cut up a second time so that enough air gets to the flowers during drying and no mould can develop. However, this does not mean that you should cut everything into small flowers, as the appearance suffers 😀.
How big you leave the buds depends on your preference and patience while drying. Now that you have the individual buds and hopefully a whole mountain in front of you, you can start to cut the flowers into shape, i.e. trim them. This involves cutting off the small resinous leaves around and on the flowers with sharp, pointed scissors disinfected with alcohol. Special harvesting scissors are particularly recommended for this. How close you cut to the flower is a matter of taste. I really cut away all the leaves, because I don't want leaves in the buds. Instead, I make some other nice things out of these resin- and THC-rich little leaves, such as bubble hash, tincture, extracts, skuff...
I only trim the buds when they are wet, i.e. immediately after harvesting. Dry buds can crumble and are more susceptible. While trimming the buds into shape and removing the small leaves, you should hold each flower at the bottom of the stem and touch the flower itself as little as possible. It's always better if the resin and potent parts of your buds stay in the flowers and not on your fingers. At first it can take a little getting used to until you have "warmed up" but then you will soon find out - it is not difficult.
Trimming is done by experienced growers and professionals over a Tan Tam or a so-called worktable, which is equipped with a special very fine micro sieve. After trimming and some time, only the resin crystals (skuff) collect at the bottom of the worktable (under the sieve), which can be processed into very high-quality hashish, for example. This way, any resin crystals that fall off, which are always there in any case during harvesting, are not wasted and end up somewhere on the table but are kept and give the hard-working harvesters a lot of pleasure later on. 🙂
Before harvesting, you should have everything you need ready. It is advisable to use at least 2 harvesting scissors. While one pair of scissors is in use, the other is in a glass of (food-grade) alcohol/ethanol. Only put the blades into the alcohol. Beware that high-proof alcohol is very flammable. It also makes sense to use different types of harvesting shears, especially if you are dealing with several plants. To cut large side branches and the main stem, you should use different scissors than for trimming the buds. The scissors for trimming the buds will become blunt if you use them to cut the thick branches and afterwards you will have very little fun harvesting.
Cheap scissors do not make sense in the long run when harvesting, they become blunt too quickly and cause more problems than they help. When harvesting cannabis from larger medical grows, special harvesting and trimming machines are often used and of course make the work much easier.
After the buds have been trimmed into shape and the resinous leaves collected, the bus can be placed in a drying box with ventilation or a well-ventilated dark room and on drying nets. The individual flowers should not touch each other. The temperature in the drying box or room should not be too low to avoid mould, but also not too high to prevent the flowers from drying out too quickly and thus deteriorating in quality. It is also important, especially with larger harvests, to keep a close eye on the room humidity and, if necessary, to work with air dehumidifiers in addition to sufficient ventilators.
Trimming in dry condition
The second method that can be used is to trim the dry plants. This is done by first letting the plants dry completely by hanging them upside down at the bottom of the stem. The large leaves are removed beforehand. Drying in this way takes a little longer than trimming the flowers wet. This method is mainly used with a larger number of cannabis plants.
Dry cannabis flowers are more difficult to trim than wet ones and usually look less attractive. There is a higher loss of THC when trimming in a dry state because it is more easily separated from the flowers by movement and shaking and falls off. However, this is relative with a correspondingly large amount.
Plants from large outdoor orchards are hung upside down in large drying rooms. Which method of trimming you finally choose depends on your own needs and how you can best manage.
The drying room
The room in which the crop is dried should be well ventilated, dark and large enough. The room temperature should ideally be between 18° and 23° degrees. It is best to have fans running constantly. One should keep in mind, and as every grower knows, very strong aromas and cannabis smells develop during harvesting, trimming and drying. For this reason, it is recommended to use an activated carbon filter (ACF) in conjunction with the fan. There is no other way to get the whole thing under control. For smaller grows, drying can be done later in the grow box in which the plants were cultivated. The fan with the ACF is then still in operation, the lamp remains off, of course. However, there will be delays if a new grow is planned.
Small crops can also be harvested in a homemade box with (Axial) fan and small favourable AKF can be dried. If there are more or if the yields are medium, a Drybox with ventilation is the best choice in the long run. Here, all parameters can be precisely set for optimal results, optimised in case of doubt and monitored with a high degree of safety because odours cannot escape and everything remains very discreet.
It is important to bring the harvest to a good end, after all it would be a shame if after the long weeks of waiting and nurturing, the buds would go mouldy or cause an unwanted stir. The point is not to dry the buds as quickly as possible by raising the room temperature. The active ingredients in marijuana and its compounds need some time to transform and mature properly. During the drying process, many chemical processes take place in your buds. If these processes can take place optimally, this will be reflected in corresponding strong effects, rich and intense flavours, a pleasant taste when smoked and an overall high quality of the end product.
- The flowers should therefore be dried slowly over a period of about 2 weeks.
During the slow drying process, chlorophyll (leaf green) and other pigments in the plant tissue of the buds evaporate and disappear. If the buds are dried too quickly, some of these pigments will not have enough time to leave the buds and will end up in the final product. Cannabis with high levels of chlorophyll often has a bitter, hay-like taste and smell. So there is no need to rush it.
Drying quickly in the oven or microwave always leads to (major) losses in the strength and quality of the weed: the smoke then tastes very sharp, scratchy and bad. The high is only weak. Marijuana needs time to fully develop its potential and its spectrum of effects.
75% of the flower consists of water, which is slowly reduced to a water content of 10-15% during drying. If the moisture is removed from the flowers only with difficulty or too slowly, mould can develop, so it is important to use fans and ventilators. Roughly speaking, about 500g of wet buds will turn into about 120g of dry buds.
The ideal temperature for drying
During the first 3 days it is recommended to set the temperature in the drying room to 20 degrees Celsius. This will initially dry the flowers faster and you have good protection against mould. After 3 days, the temperature should be lowered to 18°C under optimal conditions to slow down the drying process.
Humidity during drying
In the first 3 days, the relative humidity should be 50%. After 3 days, the relative humidity is increased to 60% to slow down the drying process.
Maturation & Drying
While smaller blossoms are already dry after about a week, larger blossoms need 2 weeks or longer. You can always decide whether you prefer to leave a larger flower in one piece, which takes longer to dry, or to break it up into smaller flowers.
If you take a flower, break it in the middle and crack it, it is dry. If the stem in the middle of the flower is still soft and flexible and the flower can be bent but not broken, it is not yet sufficiently dry. The buds are only ripe and have the desired strength when they are dry. The buds only reach their absolute peak in terms of effect after another 3-4 weeks in a dry and ideally stored state.
When the cannabis flowers are well and properly dried, they can be stored in a cool and dark room. They can be stored in glass or airtight plastic containers. To be on the safe side, however, please air them for a few minutes every day and turn the flowers carefully to avoid any spread of spores or mould due to (yet) too much residual moisture. Smoking mould is absolutely dangerous and can damage the lungs. Therefore, always store weed well and safely, keeping in mind that light destroys THC.
Properly matured weed tastes much better, is more aromatic, fruity and makes a nice smooth smoke. The small resinous leaves are of course dried under the same conditions as the buds, but they will dry faster. Then it's time to use them for cannabis oil, bubble hash or cooking (Cannabis butter).
