Peeece, have you dried any low and slo yet? I don't have anyone I can test like that with. What a valuable resource.
Oh... you're welcome. It's all a labor of love for this community.
Ok, let's try this. If there are any glaring errors I can edit them out. I figure you share, I reformat, and we work it all into easily readable form and then pull together a handbook of sorts when we get it all done. What do you think tricam?
A good starting point for the cure has been 72% humidity. Now we're going to begin the curing process, the first stage of which is dropping the bud humidity down to around 62%.
Remove the buds from the refrigerator and place them into storage jars, filling about 2/3 full, leaving the lids off for now. One of the jars will have a hygrometer in it. The bud relative humidity is 68% to 72% and you maintain the room atmosphere at 76 degrees F with RH at 57%. Begin by laying the jar with the hygrometer on its side and leaving it there until the meter reads the room humidity of 57%. When that happens seal all the jars up.
Repeat this process for two more days. Open all the jars, lay the one with the meter on its side and wait until the meter matches the humidity level of the room, then seal and store. At the end of two days your buds should be reading below 68%.
If that's not the case, and they're still too damp, take the buds out of the jars and spread them out on a screen.
- Let them dry for four hours.
- Place them back in the jars, seal them up and leave them alone for 1 hour.
- Repeat this until your buds are below 67%.
Now, drop the room temperature to 72 degrees F and raise the room humidity levels to 62%.
- Burp the jars once a day in the same manner outlined above, but with these new room parameters.
- When the bud RH reaches 62% the cure begins. If you use Boveda packs, this is when you drop them into the jars.
The Cure
- Once your buds have reached 62% RH seal them up for a week.
- Every day give the buds a gentle tumble, rolling, gently shaking and flipping the jar to keep things loose and expose more surface areas. This movement will keep buds from glueing themselves to each other.
- At the end of a week open the jars for 15 minutes.
- Close the jars up for one month, checking on them once a week, rolling and gently shaking and flipping the jars to loosen everything up.
- At the end of the month you're ready to go.
I lost track of time, and about fifty hours passed before I checked the dehydrator.
Although there was obviously more moisture in the buds, they were dry on the outside, at least dry enough to tell me it was time to jar them up to bring the internal moisture out.
Into jars they went, with the hygrometer in the jar with the smallest cuts and buds.
Three hours later they're registering 80% humidity, and the exteriors are all soft again. Back into the dehydrator they go.
I'll check again in the morning, first thing, and jar them up again. I still don't discern an inordinate amount of smell from the machine while it's running.
Zafu You can't be late here, this is an ongoing brainstorming session exploring ways to potentiate the buds during drying and curing. There won't be an end to this adventure. Good to have another lab rat looking for ways to make what we grow more potent. I'd take a guess at the fridge is frost-free. It's been a while since we all had frost in our freezers. 
Yes thank you luweedgi for the dehydrator method (am gonna have to hunt one down now). Thank you SweetSue for your meticulous reporting
I sill love the slow n low method for the 5 months of the year when temps in the drying area are 28 Celsius plus with v high RH. Curing and storing in the fridge certainly preserves taste, aroma and potency. I wonder if I would lose anything if I used a dehydrator in the height of the hot season - I suspect even 2-3 days at these high temps would affect it, but then ppl using dehydrators use high temps for 2-3 days so I suppose it'll be ok..?
If you guys knew how much fun I have pulling those posts together..... This is the method I am using. Worked well with my last harvest. I find the buds to be stickier when dry, if that makes sense.
I have a small early bud in the fridge and just finished a small plant of my mine.
Here is my Triple Purple Rhino a small bud to get a taste of it. My first time growing Triple Purple Rhino. It was open pollinated with a Triple Purple Rhino Male during early flower. in bred seeds
Here my boy cat watches over my work : - )
The nugget in repose.
Try the process it works, my climate has a tendency toward high humidity, this method helps me get to the cure much easier.
By now the THCa has already decarbed, so you're gonna be hit with a wall of THC. Let us know how it goes. Curious minds want to know.
