This is not my first time... But I am doing things diffrent and I have come across some information I find valuable. In the past I have hung everything is Costco tents in the woods with sunflower heaters on for 3 or 4 days (fan leaves everything in tact still) cut and hang fast fast fast... No real concern on humidity just hot as fuck. Get it done. But this crop is small 50 auto outdoor plants is all maybe 15 pounds total maybe 10 we will see. But the harvest will be gradual over a months time. To my new information.. people say slow dry week plus with like 50% humidity or something is actually better it allows the starch and sugars to come and go. I can see that as fact since corn does it the same way. How (cost effective) would you go about creating a cure room/dry space for the small amount I'm dealing with that's both practical and non-permanent as I'm off grid with a generator? A basic format of what I should create to maximize quality would be nice to hear Bout. Fyi... I have no intention of curing this it's gone once its available. No cure process needed Should I grab a cheap pull behind trailer and gut it? Does it have to be pitch black? What's the optimal enviorment I can create with generator power. Keep in mind I won't be running it 24/7 for a month .. Any insight helps .
I can't help with the power considerations since I'm not familiar with generators or setting up an off-grid drying chamber, but I definitely try to keep my dry room in the low 60s for both temperature in F and humidity. Some harvests, I'm more successful at maintaining this environment than others, but it's what I strive for. I'm not super familiar with what is required for the chlorophyll to break down, but I've heard it phrased that you want to keep the plant or branches alive for as long as possible to encourage their metabolic processes to continue. Temps and humidity in the low 60s are successful at doing that. Terpenes evaporate more quickly above 70°F. When you open a container and the smell of the flower reeks out and permeates the room, you're smelling terpenes that have left the plant and were being held in the container. Ideally, the smell would be more subtle, signifying that the terpenes have remained in the flower. Kevin Jodrey is a cannabis expert that's in quite a few videos on YouTube. He considers himself not to be a terpene expert, but I'd consider him to be one from my standpoint. He runs a large cannabis nursery in Cali, and he has his roots in the cannabis industry (family ties, like he grew up in it) on the Canadian east coast. I'd recommend searching for his name on there and seeing what grabs your eye, if you're interested in learning more about terpenes. THC degrades into CBN with exposure to heat and light. I try to protect my flower from both as much as I can. Obviously, light is needed for trimming, checking temps and humidity, etc. so I don't freak out over ambient light or light in the bedroom that I grow/harvest/trim in, but I do leave the lights off when not in there and the windows are discreetly covered to reduce sunlight coming into the room. For me, when I've been able to maintain conditions around the low 60s for both temp and humidity, it takes 6-8 days to dry. After jarring/putting in containers, I usually babysit the containers -checking on humidity frequently- for the next few days. I generally try to end up between high 50%s to low 60%s for humidity. If you're not curing, in my opinion, the flower is ready once the humidity holds pretty constant. Just my 2¢. Congrats on your impending harvest!