Newbie questions on Curing for small amounts

Easier to burp I would imagine

I think a different style, yes. I burp these bags if needed in front of a fan and you can make them big and open and manipulate it differently than jars. Or make them as tight as you want it, if you dont have a lot of bud to fill the bag.

I take all stemmed leaf off before hanging but in your case with a smaller plant might make sense to keep them in. It could help the bud not dry from outside too quickly

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I cut the branches off the main stem and hang them after cutting off all stems and leaves. After a couple of days the buds are then cut from the stems and put in a tiered drying rack until they feel dry to the touch, then into jars 75%full. I burp them and roll the jar around so the buds dont stick together.

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I trim and hang for 10 days then into jars with bovida pack and burp for 2 weeks daily, than in dark and burp weekly or until no,pressure than in dark. I have bud that’s 10months old and is still a fresh as when I harvested

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I don’t let my jars leave LOL…

I mighta gone overboard for my drying, but it was the final piece of the puzzle here. Got SO sick of cures that smelled like a fresh cut lawn, or were so dry and crumbly you saw dust float away as you broke up the bud. So, I looked to how the big boys do it and tried to scale it down.

2x4x5 tent. Used ONLY for drying, no grows in there. You could reuse your tent, but I decided to dedicate space to my buds.

mini humidifier (analog switch is essential, those soft power switches dont work in my application)
mini dehumidifier (analog switch)
3-fan window fan (analog switch)
Govee Temp / Humidity sensor (H5075)
(2) TP-Link wifi controlled switches
An Installation of Home Assistant software on a raspberry pi to control it all.

Using the tent helped me control RH in a controlled environment vs, an unsealed room. I chose a fan / filter humidifier as the ultrasonic foggers tend to leave a white powder all over (minerals in the water), and the fan / filter model works on evaporation with the filters trapping the minerals instead. I wrote a simple script with a target humidity and temp, as well as tolerances for each. This controls the humidifier and dehumidifier, and I’ve been able to dial it to within a 1% range of the target. The 3 window circulation fan was necessary to quickly even out the RH in the tent when the hum/dehum ran, otherwise I’d get spikes as the moist air would accumulate low and gradually rise. I considered an exhaust fan to “burp” the tent, as if it was a giant mason jar, but I find I open it often enough that its not an issue.

Side benefit is you can see when its time to jar up your buds, quite literally… If you graph the govee humidity readings, I can see when I put fresh cut plants in, and when they are finally at 60% RH on the chart. First days after you put fresh plants in, with RH set for 60 and a tolerance of 1% set, you’ll have a range of RH from 60 to like 67/68%. Home assistant polls the sensor once every 60 seconds, and if its higher than 61% it turns the dehumidifier on. Lower than 59% and it turns on the humidifier (winters are extremely dry air in my house). Well, at first, the plants are adding so much moisture that the RH can climb to 68% in a minute, then the dehumidifier is turned on, and its brought back down to 60% in about 2-3 minutes. Repeat this all day long and it gradually decreases. By day 5 its only climbing to 64-65% at the peaks, and between 8-12 days later its down to a pretty constant 60% with no peaks. Time to jar 'em up with bovedas then!

Quite complicated, yes… But I think for me, 110% absolutely worth it. My cures are now night and day difference, the smells in the jars are dank, fruity and delicious, not like the underside of my lawnmower deck, and the buds are still just barely moist 5 months later if stored in a jar with a boveda, Smoke flavor, taste, smoothness and I wanna say potency all improved as well…

Back in college I could cure in a paper bag to slow the drying time… But in this house, it still dries too fast in the winter in a paper bag.

I do take off all large fan leaves before hanging. Once they’ve hung 8-12 days and are gonna be jarred, I do a final manicure and trim off the sugar leaves and jar them up separately to make hash from.

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I did my first grow similar to @Nagel420 albeit a little less high tech as I did not apply my Home Automation to it yet. I havent set HomeSeer up in this new house yet.

I used Inkbird controllers to control the tent. Set targets of 60F at 55-60% humidity. For temp if under setpoint a heater would come on, if over the setpoint it would power a 4" exhaust fan that is set to low speed, ie burping the tent. Same thing for humidity, either drives a humidifier or a different 4" low speed exhaust. I have a large dehumidifier I keep outside of the tent in order to keep the humidity in the garage below 50%.

I am on day 10 of drying my 1st grow in decades and I think they will be ready to jar today. Last night the stems were snapping nice but still left one fiber unbroken, they “almost” snapped clean…

During the 10 days I was able to maintain 60F +/- 2F and 58% humidity +/- 2% for all but 2 days. Had a warm spell and the garage got up to 70F on 2 days. The only option I have to cool the ambient space is a window AC unit in the garage and I chose not to use the electricity.

While I can smell terps there is still some lawnmower essence to the buds as well. I am hoping the cure will resolve that. I plan on doing jars and auto-burping them with an aquarium air pump and timer. I will put a SmartPush humidity sensor in 2 of the jars to monitor humidity swings. As the swings get smaller in amplitude I will reduce the frequency of the burps until it stabilizes at 63%. Then Bovieda pack and seal.

You can see the blue lines held pretty good except for when the weather got unseasonably warm.


Not saying this is the right way, but it seems to be working so far. Anyone see anything I am missing?

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Dr. G, you’re gonna get a lot of different replies/comments… I do my curing differently from others because not everyone hang dry/cure their buds in the same environment…there are a few hang dry/curing threads all over Overgrow…try and search them out…btw, I dont use bovida nor do I burp jars everyday like some people do…

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I agree @PhilCuisine , I view curring as a family chili recipe… everyone is slighty different for the exact reason you stated.

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My biggest questi’ťon/concern is I don’t have any headstash built up since I’m only capable of growing one currently…I want to try and make it through a month or two before I get it out to smoke so what’s the average amount of time after being hung up for a week and then put in my mason jars and burping them for the first couple weeks…I am just curious about feedback on whether or not it’s gonna be good for smoking after a short period

You can smoke as soon as it is dry IMO, it is just the taste and aroma will get better throughout the cure.
It is hard to keep the jars closed :wink:

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Time is your friend. If you don’t have time it’ll still be nice. But I like my aged stuff the best.

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I’m surprised nobody mentioned groove bags yet…
:grin:

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It is actually ready to smoke after the hang dry…I’ve given buds to people 3-4 wks. after I’ve chopped them down…and its only been cured for a short period of time before someone does a smoke report…I’ve also given out 3-5 yrs. old budz for smoke reports too…

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Just googled them @alwaysnoob, think ill give them a try!
You have experience with them i assume?

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Nope brother…
I haven’t used them personally, but I have heard very good things about them…

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So I’m just about to put my big girl to sleep but I have a fan leaf almost at the top of the plant that’s being pushed down from the bud growing so densely around the stalk am I alright to cut it off this late in flower and I can’t take s picture cause my phone was dropped by my nephew and it destroyed my camera lens so it’s frustrating because I can’t wait to show you how much it filled in with flower compared to the first time around and I have still not seen any seeds or anything else but premature nanners and I am just seeing one here and there every few days but no pollination occurred so :crossed_fingers:t2:

No it’s not too late…mine will be 8wks. into flowering this coming Sunday…gonna let mine go to 9wks. or so…

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Hang whole plant in a controlled environment such as a tent or closet.

Fan on low for air movement (do not point directly at plants).

Temperature and humidity controller set to 65F and 65%. Plug in Humidifier or dehumidifier depending on your needs.

Hang for 21 days. You should be able to smoke it right off the plant. But I normally trim and jar. :+1:t3::green_heart:

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Yep, exactly what he said :point_up_2:t2:

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