Nothing is more rewarding than hanging up your own homegrown flowers to dry. Each branch is a reminder of your patience, effort, and care throughout the season. By now you should have your harvest plan set. You’re likely creating a schedule and preparing your dry and cure environments. The cannabis community has come a long way, especially when it comes to how we grow. With that in mind, my website (edrosenthal.com) and newsletter will highlight cutting-edge harvest tech along with some tips for ensuring your harvest goes off without a hitch so check our site often and subscribe to my newsletter.
A smooth harvest starts with preparation: sanitized clippers, gloves, and a plan for trimming and drying. Skipping these basics can put months of cultivation at risk. And the advent of commercial cannabis and an increase in home cultivation have led to more research and development in the grow world. It’s been seven years since I released the text “Marijuana Harvest” with my friend David Downs. During that time, numerous new harvesting tools have been introduced for growers of all sizes and for any climate. You can upgrade to wireless sensors, upgrade your curing containers, skip drying entirely with fresh-frozen harvesting, or splurge on an appliance that does the work for you. – All the best – Ed
Picking: Step-by-Step
1. Plan: Estimate the date the buds will first be ready to pick. Schedule time and resources for picking.
2. Inspect for ripeness: Regularly examine buds for signs of ripening.
3. Deleaf: If convenient, about three weeks before harvest, remove fan leaves that aren’t getting light or are blocking buds from direct exposure to light. Remove the other fan leaves a week to a few days before harvest.
4. Prepare: Ready the tools, equipment, and drying area. Clean and inspect all equipment to make sure it is working. Tune up tools by sharpening, oiling, and charging them. Make sure there are enough tarps and baskets, and an area large enough to store the harvest.
5. Disinfect the processing and drying/curing areas: Clean all surfaces and tools with hydrogen peroxide, bleach, or other disinfectants.
6. Cut: Remove buds when they have reached peak potency. Or cut entire branches of buds the same length for easier processing.
7. Sort: Place picked buds or cut branches in trays for transfer to the trimming or drying area. To capture the greatest amount of THC and terpenes, plants should be harvested toward the end of the dark period. If the garden is outdoors, the best time is before sunrise. Cannabinoids and terpenes accumulate during that time, so an extended period of darkness produces the most cannabinoid content.
And let me be among the first to wish you a happy Croptober. Some of you have already begun the harvest process, while others are pushing your plants a bit further. Wherever you are in the journey, I hope the fruits of your labor are especially dank. Staying in the celebratory mood, I want to congratulate the team at High Times who are celebrating the magazine’s 50th anniversary. High Times has had a profound effect on cannabis culture from its outlaw beginnings to the iconic Cannabis Cup contests to the trusted news and lifestyle content source it’s become today. Through my “Ask Ed” columns, I was honored to contribute and share cultivation knowledge—especially at a time when information about cannabis was incredibly limited. High Times recently released its 50th anniversary print edition. It includes a tribute illustration featuring many of history’s cannabis icons (yours truly included). Thank you, High Times, for 50 years of supporting and celebrating the weed world.
The image below is page 160 in our new weed book: Cannabis: The Untold Story of our Greatest Plant by Mark Nichols. E-book only. Click HERE for more info.
– Cynthia Brown, Communications Director, YourCanna-Club.
