Harvest Time: A Tutorial

hey fdd and everyone else. I have a few questions. Ive been curing one of my plants for over a week now and have noticed it still hasnt got its smell back, it smells like hay. It also has turned kind of brown which is disappointing because it looked amazing before I cured it. I have a couple other plants that are pretty close to harvest and I want to make sure that this time it goes better. All and any advice is appreciated! Btw i was wondering if you could tell me how close I am from the attatched pics. Thanks!!!

Btw the first pic is of my plant I harvested that turned brown and smells like hay.The rest of them were taken about a week ago. I dont have a microscope but do have some good peepers and from what I can see Id say the trichs are mainly milky, with some amber and some clear. They still have white pistils on the lower buds. I was thinking about doing a staggered harvest, if anyone could throw out some pointers it would be appreciated! They are on day 60 something grown under a 400 watt hps and about 4 feet tall so the light only penetrates about 1 foot into the canopy, if that.
Thanks again!

i have no idea why peoples pot smells like hay. it shouldn't.

did you trim all the leaf off?

Katatawnic said:

I manicure a lot more than you did in this photo. My only guess is that there's not enough trimmed... the more foliage is left on the buds, the more hay or grass smell you're going to get. The smoke will be harsher and won't taste as good, as well.

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the bud was impossible to manicure it was ridiculously sticky, I spent hours doing it, that pic was taken before I was done.

I actually tore all of the buds apart to get all of the foliage out, I only let it hang for a day or so, then put it into a jar, I opened it everyday and left it open once every few days. Does that sound right? I mean its not completly dry yet, maybe the smell will get better?

looks kinda to wet too be putting in jars. maybe it needs to dry a bit more

I just chopped one of my colas so I needa figure out what I did wrong last time. Heres the one I chopped today. Its hanging in my closet right now. So what is a good ammount of time to let a cola of this size hang for? Should I break it up? because Id rather not if possible. I dont think it will fit into a glass jar, so how should i cure it if i want to keep it whole?? Thanks again!
It

Katatawnic said:

Oh, I know all about trimming sticky buds for hours on end! The one thing I do not like about gardening.



No. You need to reread page one of this thread; posts 1-7 in full. (There's more great info throughout the thread, but the first page explains in detail everything essential that you need to know.) I'm not trying to be short with you... I just smoked and wouldn't be able to explain drying & curing any better than FDD did, especially without typing out pages and pages and...

I read posts 1-7 several times while I was waiting for my first grow to finish, and I retained more each time. If you follow the guidelines FDD posted carefully, your upcoming harvest should turn out much better.

BTW, once your current buds completely dry and actually get to the curing part, I'm guessing they'll smell much better. I don't know how much, but there'll be improvement. When mine are done drying there's very little scent to them, but after just a few hours in glass jars they're pungent again. However, they're also a bit grassy smelling; each day that they cure, there's less grassy and more MJ scent. I had one small bud that I accidently left hanging for two weeks and discovered a week ago. It had no smell. I put it in a little glass jar, and a couple hours later it smelled sweet and strong.

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thanks for the help man, I will never grow that strain again. Ive never witnessed so much vegitation in these resign packed buds. Seriously I spent over 3 hours tearing buds apart trying to pull out vegitation. It was the most tedious thing ever. I wanted to shoot myself. And now I have a bunch of shake with no buds and it smells bad! I really hope it starts smelling better!

Hey, FDD great thread and tutorial ive learned much from it. One thing that has hampered me though, is ive heard that once you dry and go to jars for cure you must burp the jars at least twice a day for at least one week, and then once a day for the next week before you are able to eliminate the constant burping. Then you store your bud, does this seem right to you? Im only asking because i would hate to lose all my hard work to mold or worse! Also will these temps and humidity be ideal for the drying proccess. 65 deg and 25-30 humidity with very light air movement.?
Thanks for the help..peace

i burp mine "as needed".
your environment sounds good.

fdd2blk said:

i burp mine "as needed".
your environment sounds good.

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hey thank's

great thread iv been stressing over this checking trichs everyday the trichs do look done cloudy some amber but when i look at them not under the scope they dont look done it needs more time for sure thank you for posting this thread
if you were to test by trichomes is it by the head or the stalk or both kinda whats throwing me as to checking it that way seems like i got cloudy with some amber heads but some stalks are still clear
here are some samples i cut yesterday one from each strain i got chemD left pre98bubba middle and 91chem on the left

DTR said:

great thread iv been stressing over this checking trichs everyday the trichs do look done cloudy some amber but when i look at them not under the scope they dont look done it needs more time for sure thank you for posting this thread
if you were to test by trichomes is it by the head or the stalk or both kinda whats throwing me as to checking it that way seems like i got cloudy with some amber heads but some stalks are still clear
here are some samples i cut yesterday one from each strain i got chemD left pre98bubba middle and 91chem on the left

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i still see a lot of white hairs on those buds.

i made the mistake of doing 3 strains with different flower times and only 1 place to grow/hang the bulk of it is the middle one with a 6-8 week flower time and im in week 7.5 of flower the outer 2 are 8-10 week flower time so this nub is in a bit of a pickle also battling pm and the one on the left went hermie im a disaster and the rain is coming to california which is gonna raise the humidity in my closet im growing mainly for insomina so ill ride it out as long as i can thanks again tons of great info from you all over riu

Thanks, easy read and very informative....peace

i read a little there r a lot of pages here i checked the tric's and they r pretty cloudy and i do not like couch lock weed but mabye 25%hairs r changed it is in its 8th week (sweet island skunk under 600 hps 12"away)if that helps at all any info would help sorry cant post pics

Where do you keep them stored to maintain optimal conditions once you're done with this entire process?

check out post #17 page2
id guess just a cool dark dry place would be best from reading that