Drying Your Marijuana

Once you’ve completed your first grow and you’ve harvested your pot, you’ll be tempted to congratulate yourself on a job well done, but hold the reins. Your job isn’t over yet! You still have some drying and curing to do!

Properly drying and curing your bountiful marijuana harvest is absolutely essential if you want to ensure the good flavor and longevity of your bodacious bud. Remember that light and heat both degrade and destroy cannabinoids like THC. The best place and way to dry your marijuana is in a warm (but not hot), dark room with a laundry line strung up to suspend your bud from.

Initially, you’ll want to simply cut off the fan leaves and

Drying your marijuana harvest can be achieved in a variety of methods.

hang your entire plant to dry for a few days, pretty much intact. After a few days, you can trim off each branch and arm of bud, hanging them individually to continue drying.

With a small fan to provide good air circulation, your bud can be dried and then trimmed thoroughly, and then dried some more. Properly drying clothes-line style generally take 2 – 3 weeks. After 2 – 3 weeks you should have dried your buds out enough to snap the stems easily. When the stems snap, you can store your bud in glass mason jars. Just fill the jars up loosely with bud, don’t pack anything in because you want it to be light and airy inside.

Once you’ve stored your buds in the glass you’ll need to check on them every day for at least 1 – 2 weeks. Inspect the jars thoroughly for any sign of condensation or moisture, and if you see any then open it up and let it air out for an hour or two. Keep doing this until you no longer see any condensation or moisture inside the jars; moisture breed mold, the enemy of your bud. The curing of your bud begins once it’s fully dry and stored safely in the glass jars. Some growers will cure their marijuana for as little as 1 – 2 weeks, while others may cure their buds for 2 – 3 months or longer before smoking them. In essence, curing is simply leaving your buds to continue slowly drying out in a cool, dark place. Open your jars up for an hour or two once a week to let them circulate some fresh air, and your buds will cure quite nicely.

As anyone who has smoked fresh green bud can attest, the taste is not nearly as pleasant as properly dried and cured marijuana. This is because fresh bud if rich with chlorophyll, the potent antioxidant that is responsible for giving plants their green pigment. Curing your marijuana gives it extra time for the chlorophyll to break down naturally.

Without correct drying and curing, your bud would be too moist to smoke properly and it would also be less psychoactive since THC actually needs to be dehydrated to become fully active. Be gentle when you dry and cure your buds, though, and be careful about exposure to light and heat.