Washing Your Harvest?

In two words
Thank you :upside_down_face:

I just didnā€™t know if there was a point where it was to late to wash them ā€¦

I canā€™t phantom smoking some of these nugs unless I wash the bugs out

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I think there can come a time when itā€™s too lateā€¦but I donā€™t think you came anywhere near that time.

Hope I can get someone to lean into this thread after I bump it. Iā€™m harvesting my first outdoor plant that grew next to a horse pasture during shedding. Yuk! So Iā€™m gonna rinse my question comes to temps after rinse. My drying area is in low 80s will this be an issue after I wash or just shake em off really good and hang with good air flow? My rh is 38-48% in drying area. Should I be good?

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U always wanna shoot for 60/60 for temp and humidity in a dry/cure. Being im in a similar DRY climate Iā€™ve always crammed my buds together on a dry line and didnā€™t put a fan on em. I found the fan dried em too quick like 4-5 days. No fan nailed it at 9 and if not quite ready at 9 days i would finish out with fan for a day or 2. They will only realistically look wet and drip for an hour or two at most so doesnā€™t make a big difference

My wash process is 3 buckets first one lemon juice from fresh lemons and baking soda, 2 following buckets just water

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I know what I want to shoot for but since already having days where whole house canā€™t get below 74Ā° so stuck there. I use a windowless shower to dry so usually point a fan at wall away from shower just to make sure air is moving. Got a little bud rot last summer but that was when house was 86Ā° with a/c running full blast. Yikes! So thanks they dry pretty fast. So after washing just proceed as normal. Last summer I think I set to cure at 8 days but then realized within 12 hrs were still to wet for cure.lol hygrometer jumped to 84%. Alright getting ready for first wash wish me luck. I know itā€™s a tried and true method just canā€™t get over the weirdness of dunk buds in water diesnt feel right but has to be better than smoking horse hair

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I swear by it with every harvest, even if u werenā€™t in that scenario bugs land on it and poo, most of soil is shit and it kicks up with wind, itā€™s just gross to think what ends up on ur plants. Outdoor it rains on plants all the time and the resins arent water soluable so it doesnā€™t hurt a thing

What I can tell u as good advice for a noob lol if the water feels to hot or warm, itā€™s to hot and warm. If it feels cold, then itā€™s to cold. U want a nice room temp.

Iā€™ve been sloppy and both sides I can say to high will evaporate ur terps and too cold ur bucket gonna be sticky for obvious reasons.

The other thing since itā€™s all about love, when dunking in water think of a nice gentle hair flowing underwater kind of feel slowly spinning and up and down a few times and into the next bucket

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Lmao just reading your description made me feel more relaxed! Not about the wash but in general.:rofl:

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Lmao! I dunno whether to laugh or cry, maybe cry cuz Iā€™m laughing?

Glad you got a chuckle growmie. Everyone needs to laugh at least once a day.

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This is exactly how I do it, too, and the temps and humidity levels are right around yours, as well (in the summertime, anyway). If you can get a small humidifier and an Inkbird (humidity controller), youā€™ll at least be able to keep humidity levels close to ideal. I actually do 50% for the first three or four days, then raise it to 55% for the next three or four days and then 60% for the next 5-7 days. Or as long as it takes for the branches to allllllmost start snapping. Then Iā€™ll break the plants down and throw them in brown paper bags. I do that sooner if it seems like theyā€™re drying out too quickly.

Nothing you can do about those temps, though haha. I know that issue all too well, always the most helpless feeling haha. I think youā€™ll be alright, though. The only thing Iā€™ve noticed is that the those low- to mid-80ā€™s temps maybe possibly affect the terps. But that could also just be those particular strains that Iā€™ve grown in the summer. Maybe they just wouldnā€™t have ended up all that flavorful no matter what time of the year I was drying them, I dunno.

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Sorry, forgot to address this. The one time I washed my harvest, I actually hung the plants on a clothes drying rack in my garage for a few hours, just to let them sorta drip dry, before I moved them into the shower drying area.

Ya thanks I did this about 3 days ago :thinking: and it went well. The amount of stuff in the buckets was appalling! It was a small auto maybe 20g and WOW! Never again am I not washing my bud! I had enough horse hair to make a hat.:rofl::rofl:. I just roughly snapped the branch to wing the droplets off were water dry within 20 min.

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Hello OGā€™s,

After searching the internets far and wide, I have found a number of ways people recommend washing bud. Do people wash buds even if they never experienced situations like powdery mildew, pests, or trying to remove air pollutes? Also, how effective is bud washing? Iā€™m tempted to throw some hair on a bud and wash it and see what happens. Seems like it might be good to fight powdery mildew, but I honestly find it hard to believe a bud wash will knock off much of anything considering how sticky buds get. That being said, Iā€™m kind of new to this so what do i know. Of all the approaches ive run across, Doc Bud seems to have the most up to date and sensible process for washing buds. Here are just a couple bud wash approaches I found.

  1. Just water wash - two buckets each filled with reverse osmosis water. Dip buds in each bucket then dry.

  2. Lemon/Baking Soda approach: first bucket has 1/2 cup lemon juice, 1/2 cup baking soda, and 10 Liters of clean water. Dunk buds into the bucket and gently jostle your buds about for a couple min. Then remove the buds from the first bucket, let the solution drip off the buds for a couple seconds, then dip the buds in a second bucket of just clean water. Again, swish the buds around for a couple min, then remove from the bucket and let the water drip off the buds for a few seconds. Last step is to dunk the buds in a third bucket that consists of clean water, swish around then remove and let dry.

*Iā€™ve found variations of this process where you break up the first bucket into two buckets, with the 1/2 cup of lemon juice in one bucket and the 1/2 cup of baking soda both in separate buckets of water. Followed by a 2-bucket rinse.

*Another variation of the bud wash that has two large buckets each filled with 4 gallons of water. Added to the first bucket is 14 cups of lemon juice, 14 cups of baking soda, and 1/2 cup of hydrogen peroxide. Dunk buds in the first bucket for 30 seconds, then to rinse off dunk the buds for 30 seconds in the second bucket.

*Another version that uses 3 buckets each filled with 4 gallons of water, but instead of 14 cups of lemon juice and baking soda, they add only 1/2 cup of lemon juice and 1/2 cup of baking soda to the first bucket of water. The other two buckets are filled with 4 gallons of water each. With the option to add 1 cup of hydrogen peroxide to the second bucket if you have white powdery mildew.

Doc Budā€™s approach seems to be the most popular and sensible way to wash buds. He uses a 4 bucket (5gallon buckets used) approach. The first bucket consists of Hydrogen peroxide and reverse osmosis water at a ratio of 1 part 3% hydrogen peroxide and 3-part water. The second bucket has 5 gallons of reverse osmosis water mixed with 1 cup of baking soda and 1 cup of lemon juice. Buckets 3 and 4 are both just reverse osmosis water used to rinse off the buds. Dip the buds in each bucket for 30 seconds or 1 min if you have mildew issues. Again, lightly agitate the buds in each bucket to rinse off all the unwanted junk. Then drip dry, using a fan to help better dry the buds is fine, but make sure you are blowing clean air. Interesting note that after the buds are through the wash process, they are fully hydrated, and this allows the photosynthesis process to continue for a day or two on cut and trimmed buds. Doc Bud also recommends leaving a light on the buds for a day or two after the wash. Very interesting. Almost like leaving fresh cut flowers in a vase or something?

The varying number of buds washing approaches makes me a little less confident about washing my buds. Doc Budā€™s recipe uses 1 cup of lemon juice and baking soda where another recipe uses 14 cups of lemon juice and baking soda in the same amount of water? I canā€™t imagine using that much baking soda and lemon juice wouldnā€™t have a negative impact on the cannabis. Also is it a good idea to mix hydrogen peroxide and lemon juice in the same bucket?

This year I grew indoor in coco and didnā€™t run into any issues with mold or pests, but Iā€™m sure there are hairs, or dust that crept into the tent, but Iā€™m on the fence if i should wash my buds for that reason? Iā€™m honestly concerned about the amount of moisture that can be added when washing larger buds. Hell, Iā€™m nervous about the moisture of larger buds even without a bud wash.

Do you still bud wash even if you donā€™t run into any mold or mildew or pests in an indoor grow? Iā€™m interested, just hesitant to the idea and looking for more info. Thanks again.

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I donā€™t. Some people swear by it. The only time I wash my buds is when Iā€™m destroying them for bubble hash.

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Iā€™ve had situations where I needed to knock-down pests such as an active mite invasion and, typically, into the flowering phase. Iā€™ve washed the results using the citric / backing soda technique suggested above and it does seem to do a good job washing away much of the unwanted trash, dust, etc.

Although, Iā€™ve found that the drying / curing properties is negatively impacted when using an aggressive wash. It may be that protective waxes on the plant matter are partially dissolved in the procedure. Which may also affect the tricomes.

Iā€™m thinking that clean water might be good for normal circumstances to wash away some of the trash collected during the grow. Perhaps the more aggressive technique using the acid/base wash if I have to apply foliars into flower due to significant pest problems.

General goal is minimal handling of the flower such a judgment call is made at the time of harvesting. We rarely have had a problem during drying / curing / storage if weā€™ve done well during the grow without a wash, fwiw. There may be situations where youā€™d want a rinse, no matter. Maybe for a relatively wet cure?

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When the joint crackles I know the gnats have been cremated. :joy:

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Those little pops are the mites exploding!

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Great topic.
Prime example for joining OG.
Thanks OGers for the sharing, respect and love
emmanating from this site.

All outdoor grows get an H2O2 rinse bucket
(sometimes two buckets), and two room
temp water bucket rinses.

Iā€™ve used varying amounts of 3% H2O2, 5%-25% in
2 or 3 day old tap water and this always seems
to work well. No ill effects from higher
percentage of H2O2 and lots of stuff is removed
from the lower percentages as well.

Indoor grows get the same treatment unless confronted
with gnats, spider mites, etc. when I will use
the baking soda and lemon juice as a secondary rinse.

I cannot say I find more stuff dislodged after the
baking soda lemon juice, (seems about the same as a
double H2O2 rinse), but it makes me feel better and
feeling better is always good.

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I use all three, lemon juice, backing soda and H2O2.

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I wash all my indoor bud, just water, fan dry ā€¦removes most hair

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