What methods to use for curing your harvest

Dry inside tent, 72 degrees. Low wind, humidity 40% and a slow dry for 7 days or more, and into paper bags for a day and into jars to cure another week or more depending on strain. like a fine wine as @Hogmaster said

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Good morning @AmnesiaHaze, if u dont mind me asking what do you use the paper bag for at that point in the drying process? Is it to insure your getting the last bits of moisture out? I thought about trying/ incorporating parts of The Paper Bag method during my drying but I was worried I would dry my stuff out too much. even more than it already. Iā€™m just trying to learn the best method to dry and cure for myself. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Iā€™m willing to try all different kinds of methods until I figure one out.

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I was hanging in open air inside my house for two or three days, then into a paper bag to keep them from getting too dry. Where I live, the ambient humidity is about 20%. From there into jars with Boveda packs.

This time though, all of the plants were able to be harvested at the same time which left the tent free to dry in. I had already trimmed the fan leaves off and cut the stems with buds off the stalk. I hung them on nylon cord with clothes pins inside the tent. The intake and exhaust fans were on, humidity at 45-50% average. I was busy with work and had to leave them in there for two weeks . I was surprised to find that when I took them out for a final trim, they had no grass smell. They reeked, like you would expect from cured pot, and they smoke like it too. From everything Iā€™ve read, that shouldnā€™t be possible in just two weeks and they will certainly get better with time. But, Iā€™m sure going to use the tent to dry the next harvest!

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@elheffe702 paper bags should be used to slow down the drying of the plant material.

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@timmyv324 This is a great topic. I am not there yet, but Iā€™m following along here in anticipation. I love this forum :+1:

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But wonā€™t the paper draw the moisture out even faster? Like the cracker in the sugar jar @timmyv324 referred to, or? Also @Hogmaster mentioned ā€œquick dryā€ using a paper bag. Everything Iā€™ve read about cardboard boxes or paper bags, people use it to draw the moisture out because they live in a humid environment.

And the methods discussed to ā€œrehydrateā€ buds that are already dry are great, bud Iā€™m trying to avoid them drying out too much in the first place.

Iā€™m just really confused, and I want to get it right. Am I missing something, or are yā€™all contradicting each other? Lol

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Thereā€™s so much competing info out there I know itā€™s hard to judge. I live in a climate thatā€™s either too moist or too dry, depending. I have a guest room thatā€™s used for drying and I have been using a nylon tiered rack for most of that time. The door is closed, heater duct off and a fan on low, oscillating. Plant material is closely watched and turned as needed. When the moisture level by feel is close to your target (slightly damp centers, leathery to dry leaf material) the branches are bagged in large heavy duty grocery bags and sealed and weighed. I monitor the change in weight over time and move the material around in each bag daily. If I need to slow it WAY down I put in totes and crack the lid. I want at least 7 days to dry and 10 is better still.

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The paper bags slow down the drying time by keeping more moisture in. Iā€™ve never heard of them being used in a humid environment to dry quicker. Again, Iā€™ll let mine air dry for two or three days before putting them in a paper bag. They are already pretty dry by then as I have low humidity too.

Oh, as far as paper bags quick drying? It didnā€™t work for me. This last grow I had a plant die about two weeks before harvest when I had no time to hang and dry. I cut the stems with buds off and dropped it all into a paper bag. I checked two days later and had a wet mess that fortunately hadnā€™t molded. I pulled them out and hung them to air dry. When it was time for the final trim I found that a lot of the sugar leaves were glued to the bud. When I pried those leaves up sometimes there would be wet spots under them. Iā€™ll never do a first dry in a bag again!

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Thanks for all the information!

3 - 7 days depending on humidity
My blueberry took about a week my northern lights about 3 days.
Only a few wet ounces at a time fit in the box
Just a helmet box so not very big I am going to set up real big moving boxes with fans in them this time around as I am expecting a much larger harvest this time around. I like the card board box because it is an easy way for me to dry and has a similar effect as the brown bag method

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The box keeps light out and helps slow dry the herb

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@timmyv324 I like to hang mine in my cool back bedroom until they are spongy. Then I trim each bud off of one stem. I have an ergonomic trim tray from Amazon.com I then separate according to size and then I start trimming. As I trim I put into my dryer (Amazon.com). When ready to jar I go over each bud and trim off what I may have missed, pop them into jars according to size, I burp 3 xā€™s a day for a few days to make sure they are drying and not molding. Then I cut down to 2 x a day, then once a day. In each jar I put a Boveda 62%(Amazon.com)packet in to maintain humidity. Quite a process, I listened to every single CD I owned.


Total harvest 1 pound +

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You need to hang it till a branch almost snaps then trim and jar and start burping

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I cure mine the old fashion way. Mason jars

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@TDubWilly how do you dry ?

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I had been hanging in my garage to dry. I have a 440 cfm fan at one end and I hang my plants at the other. I never checked humidity in the past when I tried this way and it always seemed to work well.

This past harvest I decided to hang it in my tent and monitor humidity and have good ventilationā€¦

I just finished trimming everything up and put it into jars so Iā€™m not really sure if there is a quality difference between drying in my garage or my tent or not yet. Another thing I havenā€™t ever done is waited for the branches to snap. I usually dry for about 5 or 6 days and have always put it into the cure jar before the branches snap. I think this practice started out of impatience back when I first started growing but Iā€™ve never had a bad experience doing it so I just kept on doing it, it always seemed to deliver a good slow cure when I did it this way.

@Hogmaster

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@TDubWilly thanks for sharing :wink:

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Thank you. Thatā€™s actually one of the things I was having trouble with. In the past, using my dry racks, when I waited for the stem to snap it seemed to be pretty dry by the time I cured them and put them into my final jars. So this time I am waiting until they snap but Iā€™m also taking some a little sooner. Around 5 or 6 days, what I feel will be right before stem snapping but not breakingā€¦
I can say I never had a mold issue but at the same time the way Iā€™m doing it I donā€™t think itā€™s the best I could be doing it.
I will continue following this post closely. Thank you everybody.

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Thatā€™s pretty much exactly the point Iā€™m trying to learn and figure out. Iā€™ve been getting better each time but itā€™s nowhere near ideal yet. Thank you!

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I always found the ā€œbranches snapā€ didnā€™t work for my climate. Iā€™m with @TDubWilly in this. My stems snap after cure but not after drying.

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