It could rightly be argued that drying buds while they remain on a standing plant is what would normally happen in nature, that it would be better mimicking conditions natural to the plant so it would be more likely to respond the most like it would in nature and after all crosses or not the basics of them came from plants that have evolved since about, oh …. forever .. and pretty much have things figured out for themselves as to what works best. From that an argument could be made that drying bud on plants that are then dead might in fact be the best way to go.
That might be logical if not for the fact that in nature the single reason a plant has to live is to make seeds so another plant can live to then make seeds, and so on and so on. A person threw natural purpose out the door when they said I want females only, no dust, no seeds for me.
After that everything is geared to make the final result the best it can be without going to any more undo fuss than needed.
A key to proper drying to get the best smoking bud is creating and then maintaining proper dry conditions and the easiest way to do that, that does not sacrifice something in return will end up the way something is most commonly done. It is simpler to create, maintain and control conditions when you cut and hang rather than ‘ripen on the vine. ‘Just to name two pluses off the top of my head, one would be increased ability to control and maintain an adequate movement of air more evenly around/through your drying crop when it is hung than if left to dry on the plants. Humidity control is important, if you will be drying right. If you are dirt/pot growing unless you totally shut off your plant’s water supply early enough before the on plant drying would begin the pots will have some amount of moisture, possibly now and then a fair bit. They will make humidity control for the area you are drying in more difficult, it will create higher humidity early in the drying process than should exist.
Has it ever been done? Not counting the billions of times in nature I would say, sure, but only about another half billion times over the years. When you think about the thousands of years man has cultivated pot, for whatever reason or reasons, virtually anything that can 'just be done different' and doesn’t require new technology to do it, all that is needed is the thought, the I wonder if thing …. you can bet your last dollar that it has been tired more times than the number of fleas on an Alabama hound dog in July.
If whatever it was that was tried was successful and better or the best, it became normal growing knowledge and procedure. Everything else was forgotten about until the next crop of new growers germinated and one of them said, I was thinking about something … and I wonder if it would be really good, has anyone ever tried it before? There is a good chance the great, great, great grandfather of the great, great uncle tried it, along with a handful of his friends, and a few others in the family might have over the generations.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I have been told some idea or read it in a thread on a site like this and some idea is mentioned and it is asked if anyone ever tried it before, and if so what were the results … and it was something that some old hippie taught me in about 1973 and it was something that he had learned in about 1963, or maybe even 1965, and how it did not work or worked but was not a benefit or maybe made some things more difficult, so it was not normally done by most ….. it would have to pay for one very nice top of the line world cruise, including the opportunity to take target practice using Somali pirates as targets.
Unless it is technology, or maybe you could say genetics, there really is nothing new under the sun and it is not as if we are really all that much cleverer than everyone that has ever lived before us … so if it can be thought of and then just done … it has been thought of and tried more times than would be imaginable by most.
I have dried on the plants .. partially … unintentionally … once. I had a super yield and I was in a hurry and with so many great buds I felt a bit spoiled and I left a goodly number of smaller but still respectable buds that were quality. I wanted to get at least most of it drying and then intended to come back and finish up the leftovers.
Through a chain of events that never happened and the buds left on the plants when I did harvest remained on the plants that were still fairly intact in places and totally intact on the lower level of the plants. The remaining parts of the plants were in the same room as what was hung, just sitting below and a bit to the side of what was hanging.
It has been years but if I remember correctly the hung bud dried a bit faster than what was left on the plants. The smaller of the hung buds were not that different than the larger ones left on the plants and going by buds of as near equal size that seemed to be the case as close as could be told relying only on human senses. The hung bud did not dry fast, as in faster than it should, and the rest took longer so that might open the possibility for an increased chance for mold to form on buds due to remaining damper slightly longer. Maybe it is not enough to happen but under some drying conditions it would be bound to be the reason for mold sooner or later.
The difference in the rate/speed of drying likely was at least mainly due to more plant/mass near/around the remaining buds and the soil all having moisture to evaporate but it might have been at least in part conditional, as in it was easier to keep air movement over, around and through what was hung that was was still on the plants and while the change would be minor something 2 feet off the floor is in slightly different conditions that something maybe 4 or 5 feet off the floor. Maybe the difference would be so minor as to not make a difference, but other than in an area designed and built to maintain certain environments as evenly as possible there will at least be some difference, and possibly a fair bit.
The plants in pots, the remaining part of plants I should say, took up space and were a bit of a pain to work around, way more so than ducking a line of buds now and then, so unless someone has a lot of free space, it will be a pain if you try drying that way.
In the end when it came to quality, if there was a difference it would have taken high tech equipment to detect and rate it because if there was a difference it was so slight that I could not tell by just smoking it.
For those with situations where space might be an issue it is easier to find at least fairly suitable locations to hang dry but if their plants would remain intact, or partially intact, they may not have anywhere else to keep them than their growing area. If so that ties it up for the length of the drying process when it could be vegging the next crop instead.
All that means is it can be done, that it has been done, intentionally or accidentally, many times over the years and the results have always been that there have not been enough positives found to overcome the negatives that go with it, at least in comparison to hang-drying. There has never been a net gain in quality or ease found that was reason for it to be a better choice over hang drying and to replace hang drying with it.
