For a high-quality product, marijuana plants must be well
cared-for and carefully harvested. Luckily, with the right technique, it’s not
terribly hard to trim your plant for great results. If you have multiple
plants, take your time throughout this process – perform each step on each of
your plants individually before moving on to the next step.
This potentially allows you to spread the trimming out over
a period of weeks from pre-harvest to post-cure, breaking up what would
otherwise be a tedious chore.
One of the most draining parts of your grow is the harvest,
mainly because so much trimming is involved. You can shorten the process by
using a trimming machine and now these machine can do better work than hiring a
bunch of people with good scissors and people with patience who know what they
are doing. See steps below to get started!!
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| Centurion Pro Gladiator |
- Remove dead leaves. As harvest time approaches, you’ll want to begin reaching into the branches of the live plant and removing all of the dead and dying big fan leaves from the branches. This process allows the plant to focus as much energy as possible on making a great product, rather than wasting energy maintaining leaves that may die anyway. A gentle tug, sometimes firm, is all that’s required to remove most leaves.
- Cut each branch at the stock. At harvest time after all the dead fan leaves have been removed, leave the plant in the earth if possible (if it’s a hydroponic plant, obviously you won’t be able to do so) ad use a pruning tool to cut each branch off where it meets the main stalk. Start with those nearest the ground and work upwards. If your plant is especially large, it may be necessary to use a pruning saw for the very big bottom branches, which are often the thickest.
- Cut offshoots from the main branches. Having collected all of your branches, use your pruning tool to snip the smaller “side” branches from the big main branches at their base. In necessary, you may cut the large branches into smaller more manageable pieces.
- Remove the rest of the leaves. The remaining true leaves are now removed from all of the branches. There’s no right way to do this – a firm tug on each leaf stalk might be one person’s preferred method, while clipping might be another.
- These leaves have little THC content and normally go to compost.
- Hang the branches to cure. When the bud-bearing branches have been removed and partitioned into individual pieces, the must be cured. Hang the branches to that all parts are exposed to air and store them in a cool, dry place. You’ll initially want heavy ventilation in the form of a fan or a draft to help dry the branches. As they dry, gradually decrease the ventilation to increase the moisture in the room, but never let the moisture exceed about 50%. The goal is for your branches to slowly naturally dry producing a flavorful, smoke-able product. This may take upwards of a week. Be patient.
- Don’t expose your harvested plants to direct sunlight, heat or moisture. The latter is especially bad as it can produce mold, which can ruin a crop.
- Remove the leaves from the buds. When the marijuana is well cured, i.e., when the branches themselves are essentially dry, you can blend the small leaves that grow out of the buds off at their stems to snap them off. Though you probably won’t to smoke them, these leaves have a variety of uses for creating other cannabis products.
- Remove and store the buds. Finally your buds are all that remain one the branches. These you can snap off from their twigs and packed into Ziploc or other air-tight storage containers. Congratulations on your harvest. Enjoy!!
How bud trimmer is better over manual trimming process:
How buds are handled at harvest makes a huge difference in the quality of what’s in the bag at the end of the day. For commercial users, machine trimming may be the only practical solution, especially when there is high demand. But manual trimming by hands - no matter well designed the machine knocks some of the quality off the buds.
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