I now dry in grow room security problems led me to ask an extra favour from my filter.
Before that it was in cardboard wardrobes and before that wardrobes and cupboards. I prefer darkness but back in the day some import was dried in the fields it was chopped.
I hang plants whole now and you do have to allow for them ripening .
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Well, all I know is that if you donāt chop your weed after letās say a 10 or 20 % of amber trichomes, you will get a couchlock effect instrad of a high.
I donāt know if that is because a degradation of THC or not, but yes what happens if you chop too late and so does people.
I am not interested in chemicals, only want some quality weed to vape. I think we should give good procedures to achieve this instead of entering in matters far ahead of our knowledge, at least in my case ā¦ 
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I donāt disagree - thatās the understanding I have with ripeness. But according to Frenchy Amber trichs donāt equate to CBN degradation.
Just a report on his approach which I thought was interesting because my understanding is the same as yours.
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Technically speaking, light can break down the cannabinoids in the trichome heads, but for real, youāll only get chemical degredation from higher energy particles like UV, X-ray, etc. These types of highly intense particles will hit the glands and knock particles loose, particles making up the compounds we enjoy.
If youāre a purist then you should also take into account chlorophyll will leave the buds more slowly and give you less harsh end-weed if dried in darkness.
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I normally chop after everything cloudy and I get a couple of amber. Since hanging plants whole they seem to live on. My friend complained about too much amber, seems they matured more from this and am tweaking acordingly
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Yeah I agree sometimes I want perfection but perfection can rely on many factors.
I learned a lot from this house!
85% humidity without treatment so I adjust accordingly, but itās an anomaly this house but if I compensate I can get working relationship 
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i want to follow you correctly. are you stating that you are chopping at the base of the stalk and then hanging the entire plant to dry out as a whole at one time? and doing it this way, the plant continues to amber up? what % of increase in amber do you suppose (if you care to take a guess) you are getting after the hanging? a pondering mind just has to ask these and probably other questions as well!
regards,
mike28086
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Hi mike28086, it happens equally if you just hang down a stem. The savia still flows because of the gravity so in some way the plant is still alive and keeps for awhile with its processes ā¦
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U were told properly @Papalagā¦
I also let mine sit in 48 hours of darkness before harvestingā¦
B SMART KEEP IT IN THE DARKā¦LOL
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Never heard that beforeā¦lol
I thought when it is cutā¦it doesnāt matter how u hang or lay it ā¦
There is more āhow to doā things than Carter has liver pillsā¦lol
I have been growing since 71 and have,i think,learned a thing or 2 in that periodā¦
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Itās for a slower dry and I find the plant still lives for a while.
Itās something Iāve tried for a few grows and feel I like the results.
With my first attempt a friend pulled me up on the amount of amber trichomes, I told him Iād only spotted a couple at chop.
Itās nice if you got time.
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If u cut a tree ,it takes awhile for the keaves to turn brow.?
Was the tree still living until ALL the leaves dried up and came off?
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Yes it would be alive for some weeks, even months if the weather is favorable!
Plants are not like animals that die instantly when chopped into pieces, specially woody ones.
We take advantage of that to propagate them with cuttings!
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I never thought of it like before.
It was just an observation I made while hanging plants whole as I was advised it would dry them slowly by good growers. I nearly put chop off at time as was struggling to see the odd amber trichome
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Once I read what @Funkjunky said, it made perfect sense to me. Iād never thought about it before but, you buy bananas and other fruit etcā¦ before they are fully ripe and they continue to ripen off the vine and tree. Cut flowers will continue to open etcā¦ Since bud is basically a fruit I guess, why wouldnāt it continue to ripen at least for a few days? Hmm! Learn something new every day.
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Light will degrade the cannabinoids but itās really UV that you need to worry about.
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wow, this entire thread makes me want to smack my head into the desk a few times really really hard
i dont know the BEST way to dry but what i personally do, i will either bend/break the stem a few days prior to harvest or just cut it outright and toss them into a bucket(not really a bucket but thats close enough for description) until the fan leaves start to wilt, then i hand trim them and let them slowly dry over a few days sitting in my grow room(elevated temp but no more than 80-90 ambient even on the worst days) if i want to speed dry something, iāve found the best way is literally the heat exhaust from my laptop, i can put as much bud as will fit behind my laptop and it is dry as a bone overnight, i will also use the laptop to finish or even out drying if something is taking too long once i jar it, i usually take it to the point that the stem can still bend without breaking and buds still are flexible enough that they can bend or compress and then stuff them into a jar for about 2 weeks to cure/fully dry, i dont know if chlorophyll needs moisture to degrade or if i can take it to bone dry and stuff it in a jar to cure but either way, iāve been curing at a 90% from bone dry dryness
also, a takeaway from this thread, if you LIKE couchlock and the effects of CBN, if you take harsh uv light and degrade the hell out of your bud, can you speed up the process of cbn production? iāve always heard of using uv light to harsh the plants to produce extra trichromes near the end of life, is there anything to this? i dont have any mercury lamps or i would test it myself although the blue light coming off these white leds iāve been using this last year have been pretty damn effective at making snow covered buds
Yes thatās right with cut flowers they still open.
It was someone else that actually put me on to drying like this the plant doesnāt actually die straight away but takes a few more days.
The reason this can be beneficial to us is a slower dry for a smoother smoke, Iāve tried this several times now and think smokes better.
And I gave some to a friend who said it had a lot of amber trichomes, when I chopped was mainly cloudy with very sparse amount amber.
I see this of use when a pheno is longer flowering than itās siblings, you can dry the ones that are slightly longer flowering whole and cut up the faster phenos if you have to make use of carbon filter in drying room.
Oh and meesh it could be of use in your circumstances as an outdoor grower that is just trying to hold off chop for a few more days, if a storm or heavy rain is coming you could cut whole and bring indoor, of course a little discression must be used with those big ass trees you grow girl
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Iāve done both, but I prefer to do it in the dark. Realistically, I think as long as youre not drying direct sunlight then the [hv] wont be that much of a factor. I think one of the majorly important things is keeping the correct humidity and temperature in the drying space. Volatile compounds with low vaporization points in a dry atmosphere along with high temps are going to volatilize readily. This results in the weed tasting like hay, I believe.
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