Looking good! I am very curious as to how you cure Emilya. I saw somewhere where you chimmed in on a guy's post and you suggested using Boveda 62 packs in mason jars. Is that what you have planned for these ladies?
Excellent question swwilson, let me try to give it the attention it deserves. Curing and drying is easily half of the process of growing weed, but it doesn't start at the time you chop, it happens earlier than that as you attempt to make your plant run out of 2 things at the end... nitrogen and magnesium. Even in an organic grow, we stop giving nitrogen and even as much molasses (magnesium) during the last 2 weeks and the curing process actually begins as you do this.
Then at the end, I am now convinced that it is very beneficial to do a 2 day darkness period before the chop... again, working on the cure, well before an expert such as yourself would even think of it, enticing the plants even at the very end to throw that very last bit into the process.
Then I chop, and hang in a dark tent, not with the idea of drying as much as curing... I dont want a lot of airflow on the hanging plants, I certainly don't want my air system sucking huge amounts of air through that tent, and in times of low humidity I will even run a vaporizer in the room to raise humidity up to 60% or so. My goal at this stage is 5 days or longer.. if I can get them to slow dry in this environment for a week, I am really headed for a great cure.
Once the branches have dried to where the branches will snap when you bend them, but not break... and the buds are starting to get a crispy feeling on the outside, it is time to put the product in paper grocery bags, folded over one time to keep some of the humidity in. I try to get 2 days at this stage. By now the branches are really getting stiff and will start to break when snapped, and the buds will have a definite crispy feel to them. The RH at this point should be right about 70%.
Now it is time to put them in a sealed jar... all through this process it is all about keeping the moisture in, and slowly, ever slowly getting your product down to the range of 65-60% RH. This is the cure range, and once you allow your product to ONCE get below 60%, curing is done. You can not add back moisture by any means, and expect curing to continue after this point... the moisture must come from within the bud and the cells of the bud as they convert.
Once I get down to the cure range and the jar will stay stable for a day, I will throw in a Boveda 62 pack or two, depending on the size of the container, but until I get to that point, I keep burping the jars, at first for an hour at a time, and at the end, just to let the gasses out once a day.
For the first week in the jars with the Boveda packs, I will still burp once a day to release the gasses and extra humidity, and then I let the packs do their thing and probably pop the lids at least once a week for the first month or so... and then I pretty much forget it and let Boveda do its thing. After 2 or 3 months in the jars, the cure is complete the buds are at full potency, taste and smoothness and instead of eventually drying out below 60% RH and getting stale, Boveda packs probably will allow storage of bud for 9 months or more before needing new ones... personally I have never made it that far before running out of cured weed.
Hope this helps!
Emmie
