Harvesting and Processing

When the buds are ready for harvest, the grower's work is not yet done. The cannabis flowers must still go through the drying and curing process to ensure the highest quality in the final product. Properly drying and curing improves the smell and taste of the buds, and the effects feel more potent. It also reduces the harshness of the smoke. If you started with great genetics and have cared for your cannabis plants properly throughout their life, then curing is what makes the difference between "just okay" and buds worthy of winning any trophy. And while you can't cure a badly grown plant, you can certainly ruin a well-developed one, so it's important to get it right.

Why do we cure cannabis?

In the broadest sense, curing cannabis is no different from curing meats, other plants or any other food. It is a preservation technique that aims to make the final product more stable over time. Fresh cannabis flower is prone to the same degradation as any other perishable product, so it must be dried and cured before it goes into the storage jars.

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While the goal of cannabis cultivation is to produce beautiful-looking, resinous and potent buds that result in an enjoyable and effective smoking experience, there are many other parts of the plant that are often left unused and discarded, including stems, leaves and roots. While these components may not be the most desirable parts of the plant, instead of going straight into the trash they can be used in a variety of ways to ensure you get the most out of your grow.

Reusing cannabis leaves

One of the most (unfairly) undervalued parts when it comes to the pruning and trimming processes are the fan and sugar leaves. However, both types of leaves can be reused once the plant has been harvested.

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As every grower knows, the most time-consuming and labour-intensive part of the cannabis cultivation process is trimming the harvested buds. While a few small plants can be trimmed by hand with scissors in a reasonably short time, larger plants or greater numbers can be a gargantuan task and often call for the use of some kind of trimming machine if the harvest is to be carried out within the optimum time period.

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Is it possible to taste marijuana?

Marijuana is probably the known plant species with more organoleptic variations. Its richness in regard to flavours and smells is practically infinite, varying between organic and chemical notes, with sweet, sour, fruity or woody undertones - and many more. The different combinations of the more than 100 terpenes (mainly monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes) that it contains produce flavours and aromas that vary enormously between different plants, providing completely different notes and undertones from one cannabis strain to another. It’s for this reason that marijuana tasting is such an important and exciting activity, in which we get to know better the strains we grow, trying to intensify our senses when smoking them so we get the best of our favourite varieties.

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Storing our marijuana buds

After harvesting and properly drying our cannabis plants, storing them is a crucial stage if we want to enjoy top grade marijuana during the following months. A correct storing process is one of the most important and most oftenly forgotten aspects of cannabis cultivation, so it requires proper attention if we want to be proud of our buds.

As happens with the drying process, canabis buds are best stored in a dark, cool place. Light degrades the cannabinoids and terpenes present in the resin glands of our buds, so we should always keep them away from light sources. Storing our marijuana in cool places also helps to preserve their cannabinoid and terpene content, but it should be noted that, while refrigeration slows down the breakdown of cannabinoids, freezing buds is not advised since the water inside the buds crystallizes and pierces the plant tissues (a phenomenon known as ice nucleation), allowing chlorophyll to escape and harm the resin glands.

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Cannabis bud trimming machines

Techniques in growing marijuana have improved, as well as the processes performed after harvesting, e.g. the process of manicuring buds. Some of us - actually most of us - have spent hours and hours, with a small scissor on our hand, leaf by leaf, manicuring our precious flowers. This  process is currently carried out by different machines that help us doing the job.

 Spin Pro Trimmer

Spin Pro is a machine designed for trimming marijuana. No electrical power is needed, so you can take it everywhere regardless of access to power.

Its structure is divided into three sections:

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After harvesting our marijuana plants, the drying process begins. Drying your plants - along with curing the flowers once dried - is one of the most important steps to get first class buds.

We could say that, at the moment of harvesting, only half the work has been done. The following steps have the same importance than the nutrients used or the number of light hours received by our plants.

These are the correct steps to properly dry and cure our cannabis buds to keep at most their organoleptic and psychoactive properties.

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You have worked hard over the past weeks! Maybe you have spend some money in a growing tent or in cannabis seeds ;  after a long time and hard dedication, you have finally arrived at this crucial moment.

How to know when to harvest your marijuana plants?

We will see here which is the best moment to harvest your marijuana plants at their psychoactivity peak, and try to understand what happens in our plants during the last weeks of flowering. In this way, you will be able to harvest your plants depending on the desired effect.

The marijuana harvest window is an aspect that, unfortunately, is rarely taken seriously; other times, what happens is that the grower just don't have enough patience to wait for a few days to ensure highest levels of THC.

Some cannabis strains are better when harvested at their THC production peak, while others will be better if harvested a few days later.

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The harvest of marijuana plants is one of the most expected moments for any grower, who virtually enjoy the fruits of their labor after several weeks of hard work and impatience.

Harvesting marijuana

The big question for the vast majority of growers at late flowering is: When to harvest my plants? This question can have several answers, depending on the growing conditions and our personal needs.

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