So after a decent pruning of my 4 Jack Herer girls, I have half a grocery bag full of fan leaves. Is it worth infusing these, or wait until the harvest trimming with trichome laden leaves? (I’m definitely going to infuse that). Also, how do you handle the trimmings? Does it need to be dried first like the buds? If so, is it ok to dry in a paper grocery bag? I want to venture into making gummies this year.
Thanks!
Generally I do two trims. One for the junk and one for the sugar.
I dry the sugar flat on newspaper while drying my buds and then eventually when I have enough I make hash out of it.
No reason you couldn’t infuse 
Fan leaves - I put them in my compost. They are fairly useless but as compost they create nutrition for next years garden.
Sugar leaves - I dry and smoke. Sometime I make bubble hash. I find that joint made with 1/2 dried sugar leaves and 1/2 ground bud burn really nice.
i saved them and added to the trimmings and put in the crockpot for budder. no use to waste any of it and even though some say they don’t have much in them it makes it strong as hell and you can tell a noticeable difference when you leave them out.
I save all mine and toss it in to paper bags i mix it all together from all the different strains amd i make dry sift with it on my silkscreen frames.Comes out pretty full spectrum different high on that stuff.
My worm bins get the fans, or if to many, then in to the compost pile.
Sugars all go to edibles, from there, some are for capsules, and some for butter making.
Herms (ones that get into 3rd or4th week of flower) also go to capsules, but they are rare anymore.
They are still enormous amounts of goodies in the plant, just not much of a buzz.
Like @Foreigner, I trim in 2 stages so I can collect just the trichome-heavy leaves for making bubble hash or RSO. I made a tutorial on my RSO technique here.