10-14 days before harvesting, the cannabis plants are best rinsed with distilled water or osmosis water. In addition, special additives can be used that help the plant to quickly and completely break down residues, e.g. Final Flush, Flawless Finish.
When it is the right time to harvest, the cannabis plant should be topped at the bottom of the main stem. The weight of the plant can be surprisingly large if you have done everything right. It is important to make sure that the plants or flowers do not touch the ground or come into contact with dirt, dust or similar. Until further processing and trimming, the plants can first be hung in a cool, well-ventilated and dark room. It is best to tie a sturdy clean string around the lower end of the main stem or/and the lowest branches and then hang the plant like this.
If you harvest several varieties, separate them well from each other and place e.g. clean plastic bags on the ground, on each one you put a variety or plant with a label and always harvest by variety, plan and prepare the corresponding drying places, tools and everything that is needed beforehand. Also label the later drying places with the name of the variety, this is easily forgotten and afterwards, when the harvest is plentiful, it is difficult to separate one from the other and you may end up with a large, indefinable pile of bud. All the labelling and variety selection is then a bit invalid if everything gets mixed up during harvesting.
Odour development
Especially when harvesting, a strong and typical marijuana smell spreads. The room where harvesting takes place should therefore have a room temperature of no more than 21° C, so that essential oils in the cannabis cannot evaporate and create intense odours with it. For larger harvests, an entire (small) room is often equipped with sufficiently powerful fans and activated carbon filters, thus achieving reliable odour control during harvesting.
Ona-Block or similar is a good way to neutralise odours throughout the rest of the home, but should not be used directly in the harvest room or grow room, as this can also affect the aroma of the buds.
Harvest tips
- It is advisable to give the plants full darkness 24 hours before harvesting so that they produce more resin. Ventilation should of course continue as before.
- Harvest in the morning, where the THC content is at its peak
- Stop watering 24-48 hours before harvesting
- Plants can be cut off completely at the bottom of the stem or harvested branch by branch. They should then be treated promptly and correctly. If you leave larger stems on the flowers when drying, the flowers will dry more slowly.
- If you use high-quality, non-stick plastic gloves for harvesting, you can put them in a freezer for a few hours after harvesting to release the hashish from the gloves.
- All the resin that forms a layer around the scissors, fingers and base can be scraped off, collected, rolled and immediately smoked as hashish.
- Take enough time to harvest. To harvest 500g by hand takes about 5 hours if you are good. With a trimmer you need about 1-2 hours for the same amount, depending on the device.
How do I go about harvesting?
When harvesting, the temperature should be 16-21°C and the relative humidity should be around 50%. Since light can break down THC, one should not harvest in direct light or sunlight. The room does not have to be darkened and completely lightproof (would also be difficult), but it is better to avoid too much and direct sunlight.
- The plants hang upside down in a room, e.g. on a clothesline. Now it is relatively easy to clip off all the large leaves and awnings with a clipper.
- Subsequently, all medium-sized and smaller leaves that can be easily removed are also removed and placed on a drying net or rack for further processing and drying.
- Smaller leaves, where no stem is visible and which are not so easy to remove and come out of the flower, are simply left alone for the time being. We will come to that later.
- Once all the leaves that could be removed are gone, you can continue with the manicure of the buds.
Manicure
The manicure or trimming of the harvested buds is an important part of the preparation for the drying process that follows. It is also a kind of aesthetic treatment, where the buds get their typical shape and all the "scratchy" elements and leaves that are not quite perfect for smoking are removed.
The manicure of the buds should be done immediately after harvesting. If you do it when the buds are dry, resin crystals can fall off more easily and it is more difficult and takes longer. It is best to trim the buds over a worktable, fine extraction screen or glass table to save and collect the valuable resin crystals that fall off for later use.
What do you need for a manicure?
- Drying rack, drying net for hanging or clothesline/rope
- Clean plastic bags to place plants or larger plant parts neatly.
- Various scissors with tip, nippers
- Alcohol for cleaning scissors, tools and hands
- Variety labels
- Disposable latex or vinyl gloves
- Possibly a worktable or extraction sieve to catch any resin crystals that fall off.
The manicure process can take some time, so many growers set up a suitable place in advance. Some sit down in front of the TV. Personally, I like to use this time to sort out the flood of information in my head. In any case, you should have joints, a bong, drinks, bocadillos and everything else important ready. Afterwards, it's hard to do anything with the extreme sticky fingers.
There are various ways in which the cannabis plants or buds can be dried later:
- the whole plant without leaves with the (trimmed) buds is hung on a line
- Individual branches of the plant are cut off, trimmed and then hung up
- The blossoms are cut off individually or shorter branches with blossoms and placed on a trough rack / drying net.
In all cases, harvest variety by variety and always label well so that you can tell everything apart.
How many of the small resin leaves in the flowers are trimmed away depends on personal preference. I always trim away all the small leaves, but you don't have to. These small leaves on the flowers have a lot of resin and can be processed into valuable hashish or BHO or are perfect for cannabis butter.
It's a simple calculation, if you trim away more small leaves, the end product is of a correspondingly high quality and also very smooth to smoke. However, the buds will logically weigh less than if you leave more small leaves on. So you can manicure the buds by weight or by quality.
In general, buds should dry slowly, so preferably in areas with high humidity, leave more leaves on the plant and possibly the buds on the stems or the whole plant to dry than in humid areas. If the humidity is rather high, all/most of the leaves are removed and the buds are placed on a drying net to dry.
It is best to cut off small leaves between the flowers directly on the stem. However, some varieties have such large and firm flowers that this is more of a wishful thinking, otherwise you would have to pull the whole flower apart and that definitely makes little sense. Therefore, cut off what you can from the outside of the leaf. Do not maltreat the flower just to get the stalk.
For manicuring, you should grab the flower at the bottom of the stem and then turn it, so that you can work on all sides of the bud and shape the flower all around. The flower itself should not be grabbed easily and should not be touched with the hands. With every touch, something can be lost that we prefer to have in the bud later.
Do not touch the flower with the (sticky) scissors, but only use the outermost tip so that hairs are not torn off unintentionally and fall off. The scissors should be cleaned regularly and always when trimming the buds with alcohol and de-stick.
Once all the buds have been trimmed into shape, they are placed on a drying net or hung upside down on the branch or the whole plant. The drying process and the exact procedure will be explained in the next article.
After everything has been harvested well, the last part continues with the Proper drying andstorage