Can you just stop watering a plant and let it cure on the plant?

Chop it, hang it in a dark place and let it dry till the branches coming off the main stem snap cleanly, then put in airtight jars. Open them every other day for 10-15 minutes or so. in 3-ish weeks, you'll have a nice smoke. (though you are free to sample your bud before that, but it won't be as smooth).

 

No worries. ALL of us have stories like that; Overwatering, underwatering, over-ferting, under-ferting, left lights on or off, etc. etc.

What you'll notice, is that most of your early mistakes will be from loving the plant to near-death. 'Thoughtful neglect' seems to work best for me, and in spite of all the mistakes above that I've made on my first few grows, each time the plant recovered nicely, and I learned that they are resilient weeds.

You WILL have perfectly fine smoke when all is said and done.

However, you can ruin your months of work by screwing-up your harvest.

You cannot cure a plant without cutting it down.

If stealth is an issue, you can trim the leaves off the plant first. That way, if you get interrupted, it's no big deal, as you don't have a pile of branches and buds sitting on your table.

Then you can chop the whole thing down and hang it somewhere where there is good air circulation all around the plant. It should also be dark in your drying area, as light is bad for trichomes from this point on.

AFTER the plant is dry, THEN you 'cure' the buds by clipping them off the branches with a sharp scissors and placing them in airtight glass jars.

I confess I'm not quite sure what you mean about 'letting it cure on the plant', but 'curing' is the process of sealing the bud in an airtight container and opening it a few minutes every day or two for a couple of weeks. Doing this allows the moisture deep in the plant tissue to move slowly through the bud, allowing the chlorophyll to break-down and also allows various terpenes and such to develop that dank smell and flavor we all want. (fresh weed can smell bright and citrusy, peppery, piney, all kinds of things).

 

dont matter. you're trying to beat out, not just water, but bacteria. and a million other things that have evolved to eat your plant the second it dies. Most of which live in your medium.

cut em, trim em, dry em, and then cure em.

 

You might want to try flushing your plant with molasses water. 1Tbsp per gallon. The molasses acts as a chelating agent, and 'grabs ahold' of salts and waste products. Do a search and read-up on using molasses.

The type (not brand) of molasses you want is unsulphured Blackstrap molasses. I use Brer Rabbit or Grandma's brand (there's usually only one kind in a store).

Also, as for the dry leaves turning to dust, this EXACT thing happened to me my first grow. The leaves turned brown, and were so incredibly dry it was like they were toasted; They just turned to dust when you touched them. I know it's normal for some strains to lose most of their leaves before finishing, but geez.

I still don't know if it was due to my low humidity, high-ish temps, or that the plants were just done ripening (I was growing unknown indica-dominant bagseed, and I kept waiting for amber trichomes, which NEVER appeared. I've since heard that some strains never go amber).

Anyway, they were just buds on stalks by the end, all the leaves had died/disintegrated.

In the end, the bud itself was fine, maybe a little dry, but no amber trichs. (Which makes me question the whole clear/cloudy/amber trich thing, which I know is largely considered the ONLY way to tell if a plant is done these days, but that's another conversation).

Is there a chance that your plant is simply done maturing?