Bud Washing

I get dry ice at Wal-Mart. It's in a chest next to the other ice.
 
This harvest was a Lil smaller washed 9lbs the past few days.
I'm eventually gonna do a side by side thc test. Not sure if it was a product I spray on before bloom but rim of wash bucket and hot bucket was very sticky. Like thc sticky. Not sure and have no control sample so I'll have to wait 27 more days till next harvest.


On a side note my red heri fruit and dirty heri left a ton of red hairs. A ton bet multiple grams
 
Dutty Panty said:
Not sure if it was a product I spray on before bloom but rim of wash bucket and hot bucket was very sticky. Like thc sticky. Not sure and have no control sample so I'll have to wait 27 more days till next harvest.
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I get the same thing, and I think it probably is resin. As much as we love washing our herb, I think it's true that it causes damage to the trichome structures. Brittle ones break and big ol' heads bust off.

Because I spray my plants with oily fish-gut foliars on a regular basis, I don't have a choice like others do. But the wash not only rinses all that crap off, it also produces a better cure, and I've never smoked flowers that were so smooth - no hint of any harshness - you can fill your lungs without realizing it. :cheesygrinsmiley: If a guy could end up with the same quality buds without washing, I'd totally skip it - who needs an extra step in the harvest anyway?

So I shrug off the trich losses and smile in self-satisfaction at the end result. :slide:
 
That's kinda where I'm at. Most my Strains are 24+% so a Lil loss is ok.

Cure is quicker for sure. Twice as fast in my setup. 7 days then in the jar. Before it was 12-15
 
I dont use a hot wash, but maybe 90-100F ..im not blanching my produce :) .. Things are more soluble in hot liquids than cooler liquids, even when so called insoluble in water, room temperature is usually a baseline for solvents.. Also terpenes might be evaporating or floating to top at too hot of a wash too. I wash in a designated bucket too, meaning im not washing my just harvested buds in a bucket used for drenches.
 
DrZiggy said:
I dont use a hot wash, but maybe 90-100F ..im not blanching my produce :) .. Things are more soluble in hot liquids than cooler liquids, even when so called insoluble in water, room temperature is usually a baseline for solvents.. Also terpenes might be evaporating or floating to top at too hot of a wash too. I wash in a designated bucket too, meaning im not washing my just harvested buds in a bucket used for drenches.
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Food grade plastic for the dedicated wash bucket.

As for scum and sticky stuff left behind, I don't think it's trichomes, or at least not a lot of them. Possibly some fragile ones come off, like they do with trimming, but I think it's mostly crap that's stuck to the glands.

If people are really worried about miniscule loss of trichomes, there are two corrective actions that can mitigate this dilemma:

1. Take another hit
2. cover the buds in sifted kief to increase the number of trichomes.

Of course, someone out there is going to encrust their buds in kief and THEN take another hit.....stoners.
 
Dutty Panty said:
I use set 6,5 and 5 gallons just for washing. And the water is just as hot as tap can produce as suggested
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I do mine with room temp water. Nothing wrong with the hot....as far as I know. I just don't have hot water in the warehouse.
 
I don't use "hot" either. Mine isn't even hot tap water since that's upstairs. I use a fish tank heater to heat up the first trash can overnight. It gets the water warm (mid 70's F), and that seems good enough to me.

I get the red hairs floating too. Some strains are obviously worse than others. The tops of my cans are also sticky, but unlike Doc, I think it IS cannabis oil. I don't know about others, but I end up with little bits of plant matter in my trash cans. Some of it is buds that break off the branch, some is little leaf bits from my 'pre-trim' step. Since they all tend to have some trichomes on them, I suspect they are rubbing against the trash can and that's how the oils get there. I DON'T think washing is actually washing the trichomes off the branches. There have been a couple people post before and after pics here. I have taken pics, but I have looked at my buds before and after with the microscope and I can't see any trichomes that were damaged.
 
What we really need is one of you growers who gets shit tested, to test out a washed branch/bud, and then one that is not.

I think whatever is lost in the wash, is made up for by the quality returned. But it would be interesting to see some scientific facts backing that up.

Either way, in a couple of days I'll be washing again,, and happy to do so!!
 
Radogast said:
The 62 packets revive fine just soaking in a water glass. I fully immerse all the time.
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Nice to know .. I was afraid that the gel might dissolve too much and leak through .. thanks for the tip :)
 
PlanetJ said:
Nice to know .. I was afraid that the gel might dissolve too much and leak through .. thanks for the tip :)
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The gel they use with cigars is sometimes sold as blobs of gel in a container.
Cigar aficionados pour water into those containers of gel, and the gel stays 'blobby.'

I was worried about the paper packet dissolving. So far it is fine with 3-4 days immersed in water.
It usually takes 2-3 days to re-hydrate the hard crystals, but the packets could probably be used again after only a few hours in water.
I've only done this 4-5 times, still learning.
 
I washed 3 plants today..
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Spun in salad spinner to remove excess water, prep to trim
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This past weekend I harvested a plant. I break mostly everything down to oil but I did the three bucket method on enough of them for a personal smoke stash. I did a few trimmed and a few non-trimmed too just to see the variation. I have a usb scope that I can monitor things with and I can confirm there was no apparent damage done in the process.

I admit I was a little iffy about it at first, mostly because it didn't smoothly migrate with my current routine but preliminary results do look fine. It's still hanging but I have sampled one of the popcorns this morn and the flavor is still fully intact and nice and smooth. It does seem to make the greens/colors a bit more vivid as well! Just for peace of mind alone, I may just stick with it!

Thanks for the write up Hiker and thanks Doc Bud for the idea!
 
SmokesDaKush said:
This past weekend I harvested a plant. I break mostly everything down to oil but I did the three bucket method on enough of them for a personal smoke stash. I did a few trimmed and a few non-trimmed too just to see the variation. I have a usb scope that I can monitor things with and I can confirm there was no apparent damage done in the process.

I admit I was a little iffy about it at first, mostly because it didn't smoothly migrate with my current routine but preliminary results do look fine. It's still hanging but I have sampled one of the popcorns this morn and the flavor is still fully intact and nice and smooth. It does seem to make the greens/colors a bit more vivid as well! Just for peace of mind alone, I may just stick with it!

Thanks for the write up Hiker and thanks Doc Bud for the idea!
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It took me a few harvests to develop an efficient harvest process that incorporated this technique. Now that I have my system down, it doesn't really add a lot of MY time. Yes, there is a little time added to the whole process while it drips between wash and trim, but I just work on one of the other steps in the harvest process. The actual washing takes very little time. I suspect I spend as much time washing my trash cans and getting them ready for the next batch as I do washing buds. :blalol:

Glad you found it worthwhile. Your experience is similar to most of us. Try a test during a harvest and realize it doesn't hurt, and seems to improve the quality of the final product.
 
Quite glad that I came across this washing technique... I was wondering when I started seeing ants on my plants what I was going to do about them.... This is from two fairly small greenhouse/outdoors plants:

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It's mainly ants and ant poo.

I smoked a lot of bush weed in high school and I'm sure none of it was washed (unless in happened to rain before harvest). Wonder how much crap like this I smoked?
 
where i live, dealers spray their crop with ammonia right after they cut it down to give it some extra weight on the scale aswell as some extra chemical weed-like high.

dont even ask, its awful. part of why i started growing myself..
 
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