Some say properly drying your cannabis plants is the most important part of the entire cultivation process. Every stage of the plants life is important, but the drying and curing process can most definitely make or break the difference between a great crop or a terrible end result. Drying cannabis flowers not only preserves the bud for long periods of time, but also breaks down the sugars and chlorophyll in the plant which is what creates that harsh, nasty, burning smoke and horrible taste when the herb hasn’t been cured properly. The moisture content of the cannabis plant has everything to do with the final quality of the product.
Too dry and those THC cannabinoids will degrade, losing potency and the terpenes will break down, and you will end up with a very low-quality ganja. Too wet and you have a very harsh smoking, terrible tasting herb. Another important reason to dry your cannabis properly is to prevent mold or bud rot from forming on or inside the flowers.
Mold loves moisture and will infect your entire harvest if given the chance, such as bagging the marijuana when it’s still too damp, and it will completely ruin your end product. It is also very unhealthy and dangerous to smoke any sort of mold. If it’s dangerous to breathe mold, imagine smoking it! As you can see, drying marijuana properly is incredibly important. If your cannabis is dried and cured effectively, an average ganja can become a premium quality smoke.
How to Dry Cannabis
There are a few different methods of drying cannabis, but the most commonly utilized is the mesh screen drying rack method. This involves using large stretched out, fine mesh screens, such as simple framed sliding screen doors hung horizontally from the ceiling, spaced far enough apart for good air circulation is key. When trimming the bud, the less it is handled the better as you don’t want to disturb those resinous THC covered trichomes too much. Handle them delicately, trim the sugar leaves closely, but not so close as to cut off any of those potent, resinous trichomes. Once the buds have been trimmed and cut to similar sizes, they are ready to be laid out on the mesh screens.
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Try to keep them from touching each other as much as possible to allow for good air circulation around each bud. Hang the screens in a dark, well ventilated, dry area, and use an oscillating fan set on low to keep a very light breeze blowing across the screens. Depending on the humidity of the environment, you may want to use a dehumidifier to speed up the process and prevent any molds from forming. It’s a fine balance! You want this to be a somewhat slow process as you do not want the buds to dry out too fast. As they dry slowly on the screens, check daily for when they feel crispy to the touch on the outside. This will probably take approximately three to four days, then it will be time to start the curing process.
