So.. I realized I cannot really find any super helpful guides for smaller op last week process as well as drying and curing... Can I just hang them in the Can (Growop) with the lights off and a fan going still? What all should I personally do on this grow.. I gave it Water w/ 1 tsp Epson, 1tsp nutes, 1tsp flavorboost about 3 days ago.. and I gave it about 3/4 a gallon of plain superfiltered water you buy from the ro / uv / etc. filter water for .35/gal today.
I trim all the buds of all sugar leaves while just minutes off the plant then screen dry the buds till slightly stiff when compressed at that point I start to jar cure.. moving the buds in and out of the jar..slowly dropping the humidity over about a week or 2 to 58-60%.. cigar shops will have small digital temp-humidity meters for about 15 bucks.. avoid drying to far to soon as once you do that the cure is stopped.. can't restart.. more details in my thread on about page 3.. just my personal way of dry and cure.. keep in mind I'm SW US and very low humidity.. you may need extra time or steps to get dry enough fast enough to prevent mold.. It's a fine line between slow cure and mold.. to fast a cure=harsh.. to slow and you risk mold.. once the jar stabilizes at 58% it will need about 3 weeks to cure enough to smoke.. Also dry ice hash is there and can be found here on GC.. low tech way to use all the trim.. a whole lot safer for the newbee then using flamables.. and way faster then the time it takes for most of the other methods..
So tomorrow marks 8 Weeks, but I'm going to be out of town till Monday.. Any harm done waiting a few days? I don't have a magnifying glass yet.. Anyhew... Do I cut it dry or do I water it the day I want to cut? Cut at lights out or lights on?
You can leave.. I'll bet it's not even ready yet. Usually ideal harvest time is a window of a few days anyway. Some give it a day or more of dark right before they harvest. I, and most, don't think that dark period matters much. I probably wouldn't do it right after the lights go off though. I like to harvest right before the lights come on. I notice some potent plant growing smells that they put out right after the lights go out. Not sure what that is, but better let them do their thing first. It's not really a great skunky smell.. smells more like regular plants. Not something I'd want to keep. However, the skunky smell is usually masked by my constant weed smoke anyway. Most like to keep it dry or let it dry out a bit before harvest. It'll speed up drying time. I don't think it matters a lot, but I definitely wouldn't water in the last few days.
Awesome! So I'll chop a little b4 lights would usually go up.. I'll string it in my grow area with fans on lowwwww... I have a problem though... I have only watered once since I quit using nutes... I feel it might be a good idea to drown it once then let it dry for 3 days b4 I chop?
Yep I would do the same. It'd be better to have it a little wet than to come home to wilted buds. Having it dryer when you harvest is best, but it's not worth a risk.
I watered it yesterday afternoon, chopping Monday hope its not stinky in my apt when I get BacK, lol.... Family is coming back with me for a day and they have no clue I'm a medical patient Additionally.. I want to use trim and some buds to make gpen / ecig friendly stuff... But I need a method that doesn't include butane- something easy since I'm new if anyone had some ideas!
So.. I'm water curing the entire crop. Due to moving to a new place halfway through next month.. Inspections need to be passed so stealth is really key.. Put a few nugs in a jar of water today.. in 3 days i'll chop the rest and throw them in jars of water and change the water every day for 7 days.... then dry it out by hanging it for 2 days... just to not damage it or anything. After everything is dry... and cured.. I'm going to take the popcorns and trim and split it into two evenish piles. (unless my next thing I might as well do with all of it) I'm taking half that trim and popcorn buds and running it through ISO 90+%: 2 inch PVC pipe... about a foot long.. will stuff all the trim and popcorns in there. Since the crop had been water cured and got rid of the chlorophyll and stuff I can let the ISO run through Slowly or let it sit there for a while (I think anyway.. sounds logical). Hoping to get some good QWISO after all of that... but I want to be able to use some with Vegetable Glycerin to put in a G-Pen or Ecig.. unless you guys have better suggestions! Should I use the other half of popcorn and trim for using in cooking oil or coconut oil.. or should I just use all the trim and popcorn buds with ISO? Here are some random photos!
Should I ISO all of my trim / popcorn buds into QWISO or should I make oil or butter with it... or should I just Qwiso hash and use the hash for edibles and such? I want to make E-cig glycerin or something with the trim/popcorns. Also.. I switched out the water in the SMALL water cure I already started... must not be too much chlorophyll and nasties because the water was still clear! (It's Micro filtered, UV filtered, RO water)
I'd say just run all the trim through ISO. You might not get very much, so you might as well maximize that. And if you get more than you need, you're fine to make edibles with hash (you'll just want to make sure the hash heats up one way or another to activate all the THC if you're eating it)
Ok, so run all trim / baby buds through 91% ISO (Highest I can find around here unfortunately).. I'm water curing everything (Gets rid of all the ickies.. at the expense of taste and smell) so can I just let it soak longer since there will be less plant crap for it to extract? (So I can get ALL of the thc out in one run rather than diff qualities from multiple runs) Some white hairs still remain if you guys cannot see them... so I don't know whether or not to cut the rest down tomorrow... Was unable to find a pocket microscope at the local retailers and i'm far to busy with work to go shopping in the town over... so I'm just going to go by other queues for when to cut-- Any tips or recommendations are VERY VERY welcome.. as this is my first grow / first chop etc... So any tips and advice are greatly appreciated... Thank you everyone so far for your input so I was able to have a successful grow!
I chopped Everything and trimmed... all of the buds are in a plastic container full of water and I have a smaller container full of popcorn buds and Sugar Leaf trim submerged in water as well I will change the water once per day for 7 days... then hang them for 2 days. Let me know any tips / suggestions! I'm doing a Water Cure.
Little dish of sugar leaves and stems and the trimmed up buds before they were headed to the container of water to soak for a week
If you water cure make sure to change the water frequently at first, like every couple hours or it will get reall nasty looking. Don't want you ruining that fine looking bud
weird thing is... Water did no discoloration for three days lol. Now it just is a little murky. Smells funny the whole time though lol
just hung some early cut after six days of water curing, just so I could get some a few days earlier to try different cut times
Looks like you're almost to smoke time I've heard really good things about the water cure. It really does the trick. Makes nice smooth smoke. Quicker and more stealthy too. But I'm sure you're aware that the end product will not look or smell very good, and a lot of the taste goes away. I've heard that it will make the end product weight less too, but the THCs and CBDs don't go away, so you end up with a more potent product per weight. Really, the biggest disadvantage to the water cure is the loss of some terpenes. Terpenes are the really mysterious part of cannabis that aren't really though of as psycho-active, but they are said to have an exaggerated effect when paired with THCs and CBDs. Some Indica could have exactly the same percentages of CBD and THC is a Sativa strain, but from what I understand, it's the difference in terpenes that influence the Sativa to be more cerebral, and the Indica to be more body numbing. So you'll get a less robust flavor--and quite possibly a different high. Not a less potent high though. I'll be trying to water cure some pretty soon here just for a little more experience. I have a friend who water cures some and air cures some almost every time. He likes to do it both ways and doesn't even need to worry about stealth.
in about a day or two I will be able to give them a try.. I'm hoping that since hanging a day early...I might still get some flavor, but I'm happy its diminishing smell and flavor,though I'm sad it will looks like shit lol. too bad there.is not as much documentation about terpenes and their effect. I will report back of course with a few pics of the stuff after its done drying- and a little smoke report just got some white widow the other day... Damn its delicious!