So you don't hang them at all? Straight into boxes? Shoe boxes? Don't the buds get indents from laying on there sides? Btw ty for all the knowledge you droppedon Me i learned alot from you!
I don't flush and I don't taste chem in my pot because of the slow cure method I use. I do reduce my my ppm in DWC to less than 500 about a week before I plan to take the first chop. Even 300 is good. Plain water for the last week or so with plants grown in pots.
I use the idea in my Grower's Bible to decide when to crop. Jorge says in there that when the majority of the hairs have gone red and there are very few new flowers being formed it's time to chop. The trichs will mostly be cloudy but some still clear and very few amber. As the THC deteriorates it turns the trichs from clear to amber and becomes CBN.
So in other words, if they are all amber you're trading THC for CBN. Trichs still age and go amber after the the bud is harvested so if you chop earlier then there's room in garden sooner for more plants and that equates to more bud. The buzz will be headier and hit faster if picked earlier. As they age they will cause more of a body stone. If they are already all amber they will just degrade even more after cropping. If it's really a couch lock effect you want then it's better to grow a strain that has that effect when it's at it's peak.
It depends on what kind of buzz you're after. I like the heady rush and "up" high mostly for my depression, but a heavy indica is nice for pain and sleeping.
I trim my buds completely, breaking up the colas and getting all that sweet sugar trim out. Very time consuming but I like lots of trim to play with. My arthritis is getting so bad that it doesn't take long before my hands start cramping up when hand trimming so I got me a helper. Not very gentle on the buds and it trims off more than I would by hand but saves so much time and pain. I like making kief/oil/hash and cocobudder so not a crumb goes to waste.
The bud goes in small boxes. I use those ones that cigarette tubes come in as they're glazed and absorb less moisture than cardboard. I line them with wax paper and both the paper and the boxes are full of holes I make with my trim scissors. No holes in the ends or bottom of the boxes. About 100 grams of wet bud/box. I weigh them and keep the wt's on sticky notes on each box. Every day the box is opened a couple of times and the wax paper rolled around gently to loosen the buds and air them out. Three times a day if it's warmer than about 65F to prevent mould. After a week or so I start monitoring the wt.loss and when they are down to only losing about a g/day they go into jars for burping. I like to take 3 weeks or more to finish that first phase.
Down in my basement it's nice and cool and there's a handy gas pipe to sit my boxes of bud on to keep them safe.
I use empty tobacco cans for burping as they are smooth inside and the bud just slides right out unlike most other jars like mason jars that have a shoulder inside. The bud clumps up when it's still a little moist and you have to dig it out of most jars and the less handling, the better.
About a month of daily burping, twice a day for the first week or so, is needed to get them nice for smoking. I'll slide it out onto a big silicon baking sheet and gently break up the clump of still damp buds so it can air for ten min or so then just lift the sheet and pour the buds back into the can. This is a 200g tobacco can that had 4oz of pot in it a few days ago.
The above method is not one to use for growers with larger gardens but for a small grower who wants great tasting bud that won't make you hack up a lung with every big hit it's a great way to get that. The trick is to keep the buds drying slowing in an enclosed space so nothing dries out until it all dries out. When buds are hung until the stem crack like is usually taught a lot of the bud is dry too. Even tho the bud will re-moisten once put into jars for burping the stuff that has dried isn't curing any more. Or not curing as well at least. I have on a few occasions had a box get mould starting in it so that is spread out to dry quickly and ends up being made into oil. I use lab grade filters to make sure there are no mould spores in the finished product.
I need to come up with a way to do this on a larger scale. Running out of those boxes as we haven't bought the cigarette tubes for a year or so and thinking some sort of cabinet with shelves and a humidity controller to keep the RH high and slow the drying time comparably. Got enough of those cans to handle a crop of about 4lbs so good to go there.
Hope that explains everything Jynx but ask away if it doesn't.
