i agree with brassnwood. ive tried it many ways, from trimming the plant and leaving it in the soil, to hanging it, to laying it down on a piece of paper. the best way is to trim as much as you can, hang it for a couple days, and then cut the flowers from the stems and lay them down in an open paper bag or open cardboard box until fully dry and ready for jars. the plant takes too long to dry by solely hanging. i usually start cutting the flowers from the stems in 5-7 days. dont jar until almost all moisture is out of buds.
Humidity is around 25 to 40 on the high end here so what your saying is to cut and trim every thing right from the get go and let the flowers to dry out on a screen I got plenty of that around. How fast do the flowers dry out and would I need a fan on them to keep air moving around my worst fear is losing all my buds due to mold. This part of the grow is when I am going to need the most help. I am excited that I am at the end but really don't want to screw her up by rushing things.
i am drying at 70-80% humidity right now becuase of the rain, and i dont catch mold. the last two days the humidity was 50-60%, which is much better. i do have a fan in there with the top that im currently drying. youll catch mold in the jar before catching it on a hanging bud.
What's your guys opinion on leaving her in the dark for 24 hours does that really do anything to make the smoke any better
been sitting here for the past hour thinking about chopping her down and with the final word from my wife I am going to pull out the scissors and cut her down.
its not a big deal. the longer you let it go, the more pistils the more dank the herb looks and you get more trichs with new pistil growth..it really is just more weight. yours looked close to done anyway, pretty swollen. lets get a closeup if possible..a phone cam will even focus if you try.
Having absofookinglootly screwed the pooch on 2 quart jars of what should have been fine Chem Dawg I well understand your fear.. I had to leave town for a wedding and rather then risk mold I left the jars open for 4 days.. WRONG.. dried to crispy and was no way to bring it back .. stayed hot n harsh till it was gone.. good high.. bad taste... So .. Living in the southwest USA I have hot and usually very dry conditions.. Screen dry with PC fan till the buds feel slightly stiff when squeezed.. into the jar over night.. with hygrometer.. at 1st I'm actually moving the buds in and out of the jars.. the 1st week I'm aiming for around 70% in the jars.. dropping that in week 2 to my finish cure numbers of 58-60%.. about 3 weeks at 58% does the job.. longer is better but 3 is quite smokable My hard learned lesson was to jar early and not let the initial dry drop past 60%.. once you fall past that curing stops and can't be restarted.. Humid conditions.. Really tight hard buds.. may require a far longer dry time and the paper bag/cardboard box routine.. that step here would ruin all my fine bud.. so adjust your dry accordingly.. My own thread has a shamelessly copied version of this on page 1 or 2
So far drying if going good still looks and feels just like it did last night when I hung them in the closest. I tried to get some better pictures of the flowers, and I also wanted to asked you guys, I got a sour diesel clone about a month ago and I have been putting her to bed in the same closet as I got the buds drying in and I noticed today that the sour d has some of that damn white powdery mildew on it, are my drying flowers safe in the closet as long as they don't come in contact with each other? and also is there any other way of dealing with the mildew instead of using peroxide or sulfur.
All the buds starting to feel a little stiff they went into jars. I got 2 UV protected amber bottles 1000 mls each and I got both filled about 2/3 each. Buds still got that fresh off the stem smell. Can't wait to try a test smoke and see how much my work really pays off.
The berry Ryder has a nice sweet citrus smell to it right now but when it was growing I could not smell it at all unless I put my nose right on it the sour diesel smells up my whole room I love the smell of it but my old lady says it smells like a skunk
I have been airing jars out twice a day every 10 to 12 hours buds are starting to get away from the hay smell. They feel great and look awesome, I think about another week or so and I will have a smoke report for you all. On another note I need some advice on my seedlings I have not had them in the grow box and in front of my big windows on a double French door so I thought they would be getting ample light. Well they seen to be stretching and was wanting to know if I had to put them in the box would they get stressed out or just to keep them in the window and top or fim them when the time came, the strains are white widow and blue lemon Thai. Here in a few days if I don't need to crowed my box I might pop another seed in some soil many a Jamaican Kush or another sour diesel.