Cut the branches with buds into manageable sizes. You'll use your large shears to cut through the thicker branches. It's pretty simple — to easily handle them, just make sure the branches attached to the buds aren't too short or too long.
Bud bowl trimmers work best with wet buds but will also work with dried buds. If you choose to trim by hand, you will want to do so with the buds upside down as this gives more access to the base of the leaves.
Wet-trimmed flower dries quickly—in two to five days—because you're fully exposing those naked buds to oxygen and the natural process of evaporation. So it's important to keep an eye on the bud's moisture content or you'll damage your delicate trichomes.
Use your scissors to carefully reach into the bud and snip them off at the stem. If you like, leave any sugar leaves that have a healthy amount of trichomes, which can contribute to the overall THC yield. Trimming all the sugar leaves often makes for a smoother and more potent crop.
When should you trim cannabis buds? Ideally, you should start trimming days before you begin the harvest process. At this stage, growers usually start removing fan leaves when senescence, or when larger fan leaves start wilting, begins.
Once you're settled, cut away all of the sugar leaves from each bud. Use your scissors to cut each bud away from the branch, one at a time. This will make them easier to cure and store.
If you over-dry your cannabis, it'll be more likely to go moldy, so it's important to monitor the drying process closely. If your buds are too dry, they'll be more likely to crumble when you try to break them up for smoking, so it's important to take them out of the drying chamber before they become too dry.
It will be easiest to both wash and dry if you leave the branches as large as possible, but still cut short enough to fit completely inside the buckets (e.g. don't cut it down into too many small pieces or individual buds yet). You can also roughly trim off leaves now, or wait until after washing.
If you don't have the space to hang your drying cannabis, you can also use nets that will allow you to lay your cannabis and should also allow for airflow. Remember that if there is any moisture left in between the buds that does not air out, you could lose your harvest to mould!
To some degree, more light translates to fatter buds and higher yields (you'll need to pay attention to the distance between your grow light and plants or your plant may suffer from light burn). Increasing light intensity is the most effective way to fatten up buds.
Once harvested, the weed is dried, cured and distributed to the trimmers, who load up their trim trays with stalks, clip off the buds and snip off the leaves until a nice, neat nug remains. Weed trimming isn't hard, but it requires dedication and dexterity.
A bud hardener is an additive you can use at the end of the flower cycle to tighten up your flowers and pack on weight. They are typically used in the final 3 weeks or so of the grow cycle and contain a mix of macronutrients, micronutrients, minerals, essential oils, etc.
The ideal drying room must be dark, as light can damage the THC in your buds. While it does not hurt to have a light source inside to check on the progress of your buds, you should keep it off most of the time, and block all other passages of light that can enter the room.
Hang drying in a grow tent or closet also serves as a low-cost method. Remove entire branches from your plants, trim the sugar leaves, and hang them upside down. In a bigger drying space, you can use a fan to keep air moving freely. Racks also work well when you need to dry large quantities of bud.
Mold can also develop while your buds are being dried and cured. There are methods growers use to help prevent bud rot. Wait until after a dry spell before harvesting your plants. Outdoor plants should not be harvested if there has been any rain during the last three days.
It is important to remove damaged or dying leaves from the plant so the healthy leaves can do their job. Many cultivators choose to trim the leaves from the plants for only the first two weeks of the flowering stage to allow for appropriate bud maturation.
You can remove fan leaves during flowering in much the same way you do during veg. Prune away large leaves that are overshadowing bud sites, as well as dead or dying fan leaves. One thing to keep in mind is that you should prune in intervals, giving at least a couple weeks between each session.
Lack of light is perhaps the most common reason that cannabis produces fluffy, light buds. You may have noticed the lower, puny 'popcorn' bud sites that form below the main canopy. Often these buds are discarded by growers allowing the plant to focus biochemical energy on the main blooms.
Cannabis plants need water and nutrients to grow and develop big, healthy flowers. Drought, overwatering, and over/underfeeding can all affect your plant's ability to develop big, dense, and heavy flowers.
Week 7: The calyxes in the seven-week varieties swell to near bursting as THC is produced in the glands. At the end of the week they will be ready. The trichomes stand more erect and the caps swell with newly produced resin. At the end of the week the flowers reach the peak zone.
Are Small Buds more Potent? Small buds are generally the same potency as large nugs of the same strain. Small nugs come from the same plants as large nugs, they're simply pieces of flower that tended to get less light and thus didn't grow as large.
This helps to increase resin production. Experiment With Days of Darkness – Some growers report enhanced resin production when they give their cannabis 1-3 days of complete darkness before harvest. This is thought to work because it's another way of slightly stressing your plants.
After a sugar application, the resulting sugar-like crystals are the flower's trichomes, which are believed to double in production after the plant is treated with sugar.