I harvested 4 plants about a month ago,(blue cookies). I chopped them a week apart hoping to get a variety of highs. I sampled before harvest and got great flavor and taste with a medium high. After a month of drying and curing i’m disappointed with the results. One plant smelled like hay as soon as it dried and i jared it and aint looked at it since. The smoke from this would gag a maggot. The other 3 smelled alot more like weed than they do now. Now there loosing that fruit smell and taste. It seems like it’s losing smell taste and buzz in my drying/curing process. I think,i’ve read were sometimes over time they will come back but also read once they smell like hay they always will. I let my plants flower for 10-12 weeks,patience i had. But i think i may have over cooked them. During the grow i ran into deficiencies before i got my ph meter and it got out of control and turned 70% of the leaves purple all the way up to the buds. I could see the dark color when checking trichomes which were all over 50%. I need to understand what i did wrong so i don’t do the same with my following grow just couple months from harvest again,which are clones.I’m gonna post some pics of the buds i jarred but have them laid out to dry more. The last bud is all dry but it’s smell’s like nothing and is tasteless.Mild buzz with chalky teeth affect.
Notice all the red hairs is that because it was in later stage probably to late.![IMG_2875|666x500]The bud laying side ways and greener looking was chopped 2 weeks before the 3 top buds. (upload://55pBPX5CJzWJpSlTyOnvG9WKUV6.jpeg)
Feeding too much too late into the grow.
The harshness is excess nutrients in the plant burning off.
The hay smell is chlorophyll breaking down. Curing can help that alot.
Assuming a normal plant runs 8-9 weeks, you should begin to taper your feed strength down to 20% by week 6 and many growers will flush around week 7 and just feed water only so the plant has time to eat/process all the raw food in it’s system. This will bring the chance of harshness and the hay smell way down. (You could always just water only at week 6 and skip the flush. )
Then use proper curing methods to work out the post harvest moisture and you’ll be good.
Would ppm around 300-400 range at runoff let you know that you flushed nutes out? Another question is there any hope for the chlorophyll to burn off and should i be drying or curing? Im gona still be smoking what i just harvested with or without the gag hopefully without.
hey bro what is the white on the second picture? mould?
mould is a reason for los of smell, drying too fast could be too.
Dont jar too early…
the plant should smell really strong in flower, if it is week, hardly noticeable… you should probably upgrade your lights to full spectrum white light, since i switched to them they properly stink.
you most probably wont get the smell back. but you will do it better next time 
I didnt really see it until i posted the pic, but it aint mold more like dried bud cotton like. It was real smelly half way into flower. I could’nt let anyone in my house because it was heavy fruity pine smelling. But then it gradually went away with the leaves turning purple. I was told potency and yield would be affected but i still cut them down and went thru the process to prepare me better for this next one. I did get 2 ounces a plant dried.
@HogStix sorry bout your buds my friend, that same thing happened to me also, i cut my plants hung them to dry and we had a power outage for about 12hrs, it got hot snd humid, every single nugget either smelled like hay or scent was gone. Was your humidity a little high and what were your temp at time of drying? Bye the way i invested into a generator incase it happens again. Also i prefer to dry trim instead of wet trimming, i feel like it slows down the procces and captures a more original smell as when u wet trim you smell fresh cut grass with your cure, just my opinion
hard to judge… theres a normal phase even with perfect bud where it smells like hay… like beginning of the cure. Like somebody before said, thats the chlorophyll degrading… this will go away after 1-2 weeks
Hey in the long run smoke the unmouldy bud not matter how harsh lol. We’ve all done it. The goal at harvest time is zero ppm so 400ppm sounds high at week 12. If you haven’t flushed or switched to just water I would say do it now up until you harvest. When is the last time you fed?
Just keep curing by burping your jars and the hay smell will go away. Will the sweetness return? Only Time will tell, but the yard grass smells will go away if you haven’t messed up too bad. You probably would have been better off cutting them down when they were locked up. I’ve seen it done when flushing nutrients wasn’t possible.
Can you explain to me your harvest, drying, and curing process in as much detail as possible please?
Some grower’s I know have hay in their DNA, always smells like hay
I think its high nitrogen late in flowering. General Hydro has you stop N 4 weeks before cut. Even a calmag with a high N would be bad
Did you burp your jars ?
Last 2 weeks ph water only,had 4 plants first i cut down one at 10 weeks,i cut all the stems off and hung them for 5 days they seemed pretty dry,so then they got jared. Next plant at 11 weeks hung the whole plant upside down with fan leaves removed,hung for 5 days also then jared. The last 2 plants chopped at 12 weeks,cut off stems and hung. For fear of over drying i jared them early after 4 days dry. I been burping. During all this i of coarse been smoking the heck out of it. Yesterday i backed off because sometimes i get a nice smooth flavorful hit and other times i about puke. Sometimes they smell good and other times terrible. I was using FF Trio, but from what i’ve learned from the clones i took i was under feeding them. I fed them on the light side with nutes all the way thru. I say this because i’m feeding clones on the very heavy feeding,and with cal mag and they look very good. It’s been 35 days since i cut the first plant down i’m still hoping for a change over time during this cure. I’ve kept them in the dark during cure and dry, i’m in my basement so the humidity stays around 35%. And no i didn’t use humidity packs. The stems on the first plant all snap off,but the buds seem cotton like and just turn to fluff when i cut them up. The other plants have small stems breaking but not the bigger ones. If you want more info just ask,and thanks for the help
5 days dry is hit or miss based on conditions at the time. If they were too dry when going into jars that could hamper scent.
How often were/are you burping and for how long?
been burping once daily 30 minutes to an hour, longer for moist feelin buds. Although i will keep burping what i need is a sure method of dry/cure. I’ve read many different methods and i tried to implement the ones that seemed practical to me with the resources i have. That’s why i did try slightly different methods cutting down and drying. Even though i put months of work into the plants I can except failure knowing i have some healthy plants a couple months from harvest. But i need a sure method coming up and hopefully i’m learning what not to do. That was my first grow
What do you mean by that ?
I was only using FF Tiger Bloom 2-8-4 last month or so. If anything i had deficiencies and i did’nt use any calmag. I’m starting to wonder if it might be that which turned 80% of the leaves purple. But i did get it fixed the last month. New green growth told me that much. That’s why i didn’t harvest until 10,11, and 12th week. I had 40 to 60% amber. And after waiting that long i still seen a few clear trichomes that i swear were all gone at one point.
I just burped them and the hay smell is changing to a pine smell. I’ve been smoking this stuff for a month and today i finally had my fill of it.So for the first time in a long time i never smoked. The thought of coughing from smoke makes me nauseous today. So might as well regenerate my weed tolerance.
Pine is normal, so that could be a good sign. While I’m sure there is some very scientific methods available, transitioning from dry to cure to storage is somewhat of an art in my opinion. It’s difficult to keep the same metrics in different seasons and spaces. You may have let it dry out a little fast, which is easy to do in dry winter months. Burping for 30-60 min may not have helped either. I can’t say for sure as the stuff isn’t in my hand, and I didn’t monitor it through the process.
A few of us discussed our methods in detail here