Harvest time is the moment that every grower looks forward. After all the love and effort dedicated to our plants, we can reap the fruits.
Although most of us would love to cut the plants and enjoy them as soon as possible, we must first carry out the drying process.
MANICURING, DRYING AND CURING
Many people think that this procedure is unimportant, but they are very wrong. If we don’t manicure, dry and cure buds, we will have wasted time and effort in a marijuana with less smell and less flavor. We can also have problems with fungi proliferating.
Manicuring, drying and curing are successive processes that are just as important as the rest of the growing process if we want to enjoy a top-quality marijuana.
Manicure:
Manicuring is the first task we must do after cutting plants. It consists of cutting the leaves around the buds with scissors, leaving only those leaves full of resin that are very close to the bud.
The manicuring can be done in different ways depending on the weather: if it is very humid, it is advisable to remove most leaves to facilitate the loss of moisture during drying. On the other hand, if the climate is dry, it is preferable to cut only the larger leaves and leave the rest so that the drying is slower and there is no loss of moisture too fast that ends up drying the bud too much.
The remains of the manicured can be stored for extractions, remember that we must make the most of our plants.
Dry Marijuana:
- This is a very important process. Through the drying process, what we are doing is removing moisture from the buds and that along with the water is also eliminated much of the chlorophyll that gives bad flavor to marijuana.
- Once we have finished manicuring, we will look for a cool, dry and dark place where we must place the plants with separation between them to facilitate drying. This room must be ventilated to remove moisture from the environment.
- We can place a fan but keeping in mind that the air cannot hit the plants directly. It would cause the buds to dry too much outside but still wet inside.
- Usually, the plants are hung upside down on ropes, like a clothesline, although there are very ingenious growers who build their own drying areas. Grid dryers, networks that are sold exclusively for drying, can also be used.
- During drying, we must control some parameters that will allow the process to be carried out correctly and that we do not change to the next stage with buds that are too dry or too wet. The temperature of the room must oscillate between 15-20ºC, the relative humidity must be around 50-60% and we must make sure that there are no air currents and that it is always dark.
When the branches bend, but without cracking when they break, we must begin curing.
Curing:
Curing is a fundamental phase if we want to smoke quality marijuana. Many growers tend to skip this part of the process, but it is a serious mistake.
During curing, what we do is degrade the rest of the chlorophyll left after drying to avoid that when we smoke it tastes bad. We’ve all smoked marijuana occasionally that tastes green, that’s because curing hasn’t been done correctly.
Through this process the marijuana acquires its authentic flavor with all its nuances and the effect is also different from that which we would experience if we skipped the curing.
To properly carry out the curing we must put the dried buds in a glass jar with lid or in a wooden box, which we will open and close daily to prevent mould growth.
We will observe during the first days that the buds are humid again, so it is important that we open the canister or box daily and that the buds are not compressed so that they can be aerated.
By about a month the box or boat can be closed. We can start tasting our first buds and enjoy our harvest as we deserve. Curing is a process that can take from 1 month to as long as we want.
With all the remains we can take advantage of to make some extractions or delicious cannabic recipes.
It is important to understand that once we have harvested, the process of manicuring, drying and curing have their time and that it is not a good idea to try to take shortcuts because we will smoke a worse marijuana.
