This time we will see the most important points both in the drying of marijuana plants, and in curing it. We must pay attention to these two points as, if not, we can spoil an entire harvest or at least reduce the quality of the flowers in a drastic way. We will also see various techniques for preparing our flowers for drying. You can try and grow cannabis seeds indoor and outdoor with the best seeds online blue dream seeds and lemon auto seeds.
DRYING THE MARIJUANA
We must remember that the ideal temperature for drying cannabis is 18 to 24 degrees Celsius and the relative humidity between 45 and 50 percent . The drying of the marijuana can be carried out in several ways, depending on the number of plants we have: In the case of having one or two plants, we can carry out all the pruning of the largest leaves and remove branch by branch to carry out the pruning of the leaves closest to the bud (we will keep them in the case of containing resin to make extractions). Once we have completed this step, we can hang the branches on a clothesline or similar for subsequent drying in a dark room with the correct humidity and temperature parameters. In the case of having more than two plants or different varieties,
I recommend the use of typical dryers , which we can find in our grow-shop . In this case, we can leave the buds without the branch to hold them. We must remember that, thus doing the drying, we will see the number of days required reduced. Another technique widely used by growers in the United States is to only remove the largest leaves , which do not contain resin, at the time of cutting the plants and placing them in the dryer. With this, the resin contained in the flowers is protected by the leaves that surround it.
Once the plants are dry, the final pruning is carried out. This step is a little more complicated since we find it more difficult to access the flower and leave it completely clean of leaves (it is not recommended if you do not have a little patience to perform this technique). The drying will be finished when the flowers lose a large part of the water they contain , without becoming "crisp" at all. Another way to determine if you have reached the point of going to the healing phase is to see if the stick that holds the bud breaks. This will be the right moment to transfer the flowers to the jars and cure them in perfect condition.
CURING MARIJUANA
We cure the marijuana so that much of the chlorophyll that the flowers may still contain degrades, giving way to a finer flavor and more fixed flavors in them. In my personal opinion, some terpenes such as limonene will be degraded with curing, to the point that after more than 2 months of curing I do not find a trace of that terpene that I like so much. We also see that elements such as nitrogen that the flowers may contain, disappear as the healing progresses, leaving a much cleaner flavor. In order to cure the flowers in perfect condition, we must use jars that do not let light or air pass , since at this point these two factors will be the ones that will most negatively affect our flowers. The first weeks after introducing the flowers into the Bottles, we will open them less and less times a day, until after the first three weeks we will no longer open them. With this we will ensure that once the flowers are in perfect condition to be conserved, they can be stored with total security that the precious trichomes are not going to degrade so quickly .
DECARBOXYLATION, A VERY IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTION
We must bear in mind that the resin contained in our freshly cut plants is not active (non-psychoactive effect). A very important process must be produced for this resin to pass from an acidic and inactive form to the form that we all know as THC (active and psychoactive). This process is called decarboxylation and it occurs through healing and the passage of time (it can occur in another way that I will explain in another more specific article). After a few months, our marijuana will be totally psychoactive and will be totally cured and ready for consumption.
A COMMONLY REPEATED MISTAKE
I have seen a big mistake repeated several times by various marijuana growers. After a few months of working outdoors to have large and beautiful flowers, these growers spent months with their flowers hanging in the drying room. When they went to use them in some extraction, they saw that the state of these trichomes was of worse quality than those of the flowers that they had stored. In these cases we see very clear how important it is to perfectly preserve our marijuana plants to be able to enjoy them after a few months. One more week, I hope I have been of help to all readers.