I have a couple smallish plants from a short test run of a project. Two selections finishing quickly and I’m curious about a different approach to harvest/drying/curing. Brief technical points
(Sour Bubble x So Flo OG) x Chem4
1 gl coco/peat living/super soil
Day 49
I’m wondering if anyone has initiated harvest by putting the whole plant, still rooted in pot, in total darkness and left to dry, and maybe cure in the same manner. I’m curious what the plant would do in it’s last hours. Would the biochemistry at work be that different from a chop and hang? My gut tells me it will pull a hail Mary and dump all resources into bolstering the flower in a last ditch attempt to get pollinated. Or will it spend that energy trying to intersex with nanners? If anyone has thoughts or experience here please chime in. Thanks!
I think the plant just dies slowly.
It will use its resourses to stay alive.
I did this a few times and did not care for the results.
The smell and flavor is better when killed and dried quickly.
I feel a plant is better flash dried for the first day or 2.
Not hot, but dried fast.
Not bone dry just dry enough to prevent mold.
Then go slowly drier from there.
What you suggest will not ruin the plant but I feel there are better ways to kill and dry a plant.
Good luck, if you do try it let us know what you find.
Peace
shag
i never smoked the flower from it but the main thing that turned me off was it made it harder to trim. the buds and leaves shrinking and becoming more soft and floppy but not “dry” (if that makes any sense). smell ripened/changed really fast too.
I’d appreciate a TON more evidence and research on this. There are currently no studies that support that darkness, 24-48 hours, has any impact on cannabinoid concentrations. It’s well intended and I’d appreciate if it were true, but cannabinoids and terpenes will only degrade from peak ripeness/harvest. All we can do is limit that degradation and so far, darkness seems to have zero impact on it. A few studies suggest that going beyond 72 hours can actually have a negative impact and hasten degradation.
And in fact, here’s a thread discussing the opposite! Either way, let me know what you do and how it turns out
There is a fine line between empirical, anecdotal observation and bro science, it seems this topic may give rise to both. I’m inclined to favor the first hand experience of my fellows here. The picture I’m gathering now is arrest the senescence sharply to preserve the best condition of the flower and let the drying/curing process proceed.
Following the best thinking thus far:
I have seen people uproot the plant and dry with roots in tact, others cut at soil level. Any input on which is a better approach?
This describes my current best practice that I’ve done for years. It was really born out of necessity during outdoor guerrilla ops where every minute of exposure increased risk of detection, and curing had to be done offsite in trash bags and crumpled newspaper, often outside or in a makeshift shed, with max risk of rot if started to wet. Now that I’m old and just do my personal projects indoor I have much more control over the process, but still have that anxiety of loss to rot, so I get them to the sweet spot probably quicker than most indoor growers by giving them that first flash of drying. But I don’t really feel the quality suffers from it.
I have experimented with this over the years. I have found that it does work to some extent but only when the soil is bone dry and you leave it in a COLD totally dark space for at least 1 week. You have to weigh the cost to benefit of this practice but I have seen “some” increase of resin production and I feel that the thc increased as well.
That’s the context that is needed here. I believe Bugbee was debunking the 48-hours of darkness “Bro-myth.”
He was apparently stumped as to why anyone would believe starving a struggling plant could be beneficial and in an off-hand manner suggested that maybe 48-hours of light could be beneficial but not deprivation.
He wasn’t endorsing 48-hours of light but rather dismissing the idea that there could be any sort of logic to believing a possible benefit could be derived from depriving the plant of light.
Essentially he was saying giving it 48-hours of uninterrupted light makes more sense than the opposite.
But he wasn’t endorsing that as a legitimate method IMO.
I’ve left good sized lowers on my plants in the dark at around 70°F for well over two weeks with absolutely no discernable difference in size, taste or potency. It wasn’t a test, I just didn’t have any more drying room when the tops were removed and hung.
During lights on, sugars are made with photosynthesis and quickly stored as starch…
At light out starch are broke down into sugar and exuded through the roots to feed mycos.
What is happening through cure?
Darkness before harvest jumpstarts cure
Something like that
I really don’t know
🫡
Also the notion that weed loses quality from chop and on is some short bus window licking notion. If your weed doesn’t get better every month for the next six+ months you’re doing something wrong.
I don’t have any proof but the few times I stuck a clone in the dark for 2-3 days and came back to chop it, it looked freaked out compared to a clone of the same plant that stayed in the tent under normal flower times. I preferred the one’s that didn’t spend any time in extended dark periods. I might do one day out of the tent in the dark before chop but that’s out of pure laziness, not because I think it does anything beneficial to the plant at all
Well the answer to that is fairly simple. As cultivators we employ various manners of stress strategically to these plants to flip the immunity and protective genetic dip switches, ie trichomes loaded with chems. Sometimes I wonder that dude Buggs even grows weed.
Sorry no one wants to hear that everything they know is wrong. Bruce Bugbee is kinda cute I guess. Maybe he can convince me that Oswald killed jfk, Epstein killed himself and whatever other alphabet sponsored lies. I won’t talk about how sad it is that pot warriors pretended to hate the government for decades only to have their natural medicine swindled away from them by fed employees.
All I’ll say is, next time you come across a dead rodent or snake, cut it in half, put one half in the freezer. Put the other half in a Mason jar, burp it every day and tell us how the roadkill terps compare. Now get a Grove bag and you don’t have to burp, because they let oxygen in and co2 out.
Now go compare the 5 year old dollar store garlic on your spice rack to the top shelf 3.47% terp Garlic bud from the dispo. One will smell like garlic, the other, a bud tender will have to tell you some lie or excuse. To put it shortly, the weird angle of “terpene preservation” has been explored and the end result is what we have today, lotus cure cryo cure unburped bud that nobody wants.
Cannabis knows it’s day length, and times the usage of carbs on that diurnal cycle. If the day length is extended, it will break down proteins. Not many growers have a bulk of protein. Their nitrogen is still in the Nitrate form, ammonia form, or been flushed out completely. Every grower I meet under feeds and harvests 2 weeks late due to slow development, burning up all their energy and finishing weak and unripe.
What does thc degrade into? Hmm… So what degrades into thc? Amber trichs are a losers game. Wanna know who’s actually growing trash on the net? They wait for amber trichs. Just like all these breeders, growers and smokers be grading the flower mid bloom not post harvest.
That’s a really good way to attract a lot of negative attention, my friend. Lol I’ll respond more when I sit down, but I don’t know that I made any real claims… a lot of beliefs and opinions, of which you’re entitled to you’re own. You can start a log or show your plants to back up what you’re saying, I guess. Goodluck trying to get under my skin @PiffElement
I never claimed light or dark was better, just wished for more documentation. I’ve played with darkness pre harvest and have let a plant essentially dry on the stalk while still in the ground. While anecdotally, I think darkness helped a couple cuts I tried it with, it didn’t do much for others. It was two harvests and just my experience, which is why I wished for more. I like this topic.
To respond to @Mithridate , I certainly don’t want to go toe to toe, but “better” doesn’t mean things haven’t degraded slightly. Better simply means you like it more then. Drying and curing has a big impact on storage and flavor, but thca in the plant will be highest at peak ripeness. Once chopped, it will slowly(depending on how you treat it) start to degrade into CBN, cbg and other minor cannabinoids. Those things also influence the high. What you prefer is personal preference, but I’d like to keep the science straight. I like the evidence here and wasn’t trying to come off aggressively in my first post.
Personally I do harvest at the very beginning of my plants day if I can help it, about an inch above the soil, pull large fans and hang dry.
Here is this:
In it it says "Determining the optimum harvesting stage is a critical step in cannabis cultivation. Too early or too late can significantly affect the yield of Δ9-THC. Periodical monitoring of Δ9-THC level allows harvesting material with the desired content. Harvesting should be done in the morning because Δ9-THC level peaks before noon and then gradually declines. "
I do believe it’s this line of thinking that got people wanting to experiment with longer dark periods before harvest to increase sugars and hormone concentration in the flowers/fruits before harvest. It’s just not studied was my claim and I like that we are doing it here at OG. I appreciate all of you and this study doesn’t back up me talking about THC degrading after harvest because that’s very easily searchable and common knowledge in the commercial world. I chop in a bit and can leave someone in darkness for a bit longer just to add a more current contribution
What I love about OG vs RIU, there’s a toxic attitude shared by some at RIU that permeates through any attempt to create a platform for the sharing of ideas and constructive criticism based in proper science. I have found OG to have more people that share the spirit of scientific discipline, research, and discovery. It saddens me when someone shits on the sharing of ideas that are born from a genuine desire to learn. Some ideas prove useless in application, or illogical after a more seasoned voice chimes in, doesn’t mean it was a bad idea to explore. A short bus reference says more about the driver than the passenger if you catch my drift. That being said, I shouldn’t have taken a poke at Bruce Bugbee without reviewing his work thoroughly. It just struck me odd that he couldn’t connect the dots to strategic manipulation of the stress responses. That is my favorite area to experiment with as it has a direct correlation to growth vigor, immunity, and trichome production. I plan on sharing other ideas and experiences on this topic and I appreciate all of your genuine voices and hard won knowledge.
I experimented a lot with dark periods, and slow deaths; it never seemed to make any real difference. Good bud is made over weeks and months, so I just don’t think a couple days will make more than a .1% difference. Also, the plant should have slowed down on its own if you are cutting it, so production is already reduced/negligible.
Hanging upside down is best for structure of buds to stay tight and dry properly, so that was another reason I found a slow death right side up probably isn’t ideal
Now, reducing daytime light strength for the last week or two, that’s an idea I feel has more merit
Goodluck trying to get under my skin 
I chop in a bit and can leave someone in darkness for a bit longer just to add a more current contribution