When is it best to manicure your buds?
- Thread starter azaiden
- Start date
Akornpatch
Well-Known Member
It all depends on the appearance that you want, or the speed at which you want to get the job done.
"Fresh" trimming is fastest. You just snip all protruding items off at bud level.
"Dried" is slower, with the potential for more trichomes to be knocked off.
Conniseur cut is when all the leaves are removed from the bud...and the most time consuming.
"Fresh" trimming is fastest. You just snip all protruding items off at bud level.
"Dried" is slower, with the potential for more trichomes to be knocked off.
Conniseur cut is when all the leaves are removed from the bud...and the most time consuming.
MadameCrash
Well-Known Member
IMHO, this is what a properly trimmed and manicured bud should look like... (This is one of Urdedpal's bud pics 
)
Peace
MC
)
Peace
MC
Akornpatch
Well-Known Member
Perfecto!!!
quantuman
New Member
and what if i cut all the leaf it jast slow the process ?
but the quality will be the same?
and it can suntan mor good ?
let's say it supposed to tike 9 week so now its tike 10-14 week not included the wash and the dry ya?
but the quality will be the same?
and it can suntan mor good ?
let's say it supposed to tike 9 week so now its tike 10-14 week not included the wash and the dry ya?
MadameCrash
Well-Known Member
hmm.. not sure what you're asking. You don't want to trim the leaves off while the plant is still flowering - quality and quantity will suffer..
If you wait until after it's harvested and dried to trim, it will be very difficult if not impossible to get the small fan leaves off without ruining all the trichromes on the buds.
Any excess moisture during the drying process is not good.. not only will it slow everything down. but it increases the possiblity of bud rot or mold getting started.
Peace
MC
You don't want to trim the leaves off while the plant is still flowering - quality and quantity will suffer..If you wait until after it's harvested and dried to trim, it will be very difficult if not impossible to get the small fan leaves off without ruining all the trichromes on the buds.
Any excess moisture during the drying process is not good.. not only will it slow everything down. but it increases the possiblity of bud rot or mold getting started.
Peace
MC
Brett2theMax
New Member
I tend to go overboard when trimming my bud. I trim all the leaf off at the stem, so I tend to open up the but a bit when trimming but its wet so it all goes back into place. Leaf gives you more weight if that means anything, but if you cut off that leaf and still cure it you can make hash or just make butter, oil, or milk with it and have a bake off.
IshmarRodriguez
Well-Known Member
I'm all about the bake offs! Trim them so they look nice and use the rest. Waste nothing of the plant.
MadameCrash has a perfect picture of what a trimmed bud should look like. I sometimes do the connoisseur trim but really your wasting a lot of very good smokable bud. If you trim too much leaf you loose the crystal effect and people love to see all the crystals.
alienbob
New Member
I agree that the picture posted above is what you should be aiming for. The leaf within the bud actually has quite a high THC content so you don't want to be digging in and cutting it out.
OldMedUser
Formerly Known as LabRat
I trim mine even closer than the picture shows. I do it with fresh buds and want every bit of trim for hash oil/kief. I'm really getting into eating pot as it seems to greatly reduce pain from my arthritis.
As I work up the cola I trim out anything with glands on it and separate each bud from the stalk for curing. It takes me a couple of hours to trim enough bud to get an ounce of dry. I'm a fussy old fart.
I use butane to get the best honey. The pot can next be used to get an oil extraction with iso-propanol, methanol or petroleum ether. A quick methyl hydrate extraction can be cleaned up with a bit of petroleum ether and a freezer. If you want to know more, ask.
I'm going to try mixing some honey oil with kief to see if I can make some decent hash. Any thoughts?
I have two analytical balances that are good to one ten thousands of a gram and have lots of stuff to experiment with so I plan on keeping records and will let you all know how it works out.
I'm building a new condenser coil for my home built still and will record it in pictures along with my butane extraction method for later posting here.
Distilling petroleum ether from camp stove fuel is extremely hazardous as is butane extraction for honey oil and should not be undertaken if you tend to be a klutz.
I use my still to purify vodka to 97% for tinctures and it is just as dangerous to do that as it is to make pet-ether. None of this stuff is for the faint of heart as one forgotten thing is all it takes to blow yourself to kingdom come.
I loaned a buddy most of my lab gear to make oil from leaves with. Three 2L boiling balls, three still heads, three water cooled condensers plus all related equipment went up in smoke when dumbass walked in with a lit cigarette. Four or five skin grafts later fixed him up OK. He's gone to me but I sure miss my gear!
Lots of fun playing with this stuff until it goes tits-up. I'll be back on the truck delivering anhydrous ammonia to the farmers in a week or so. You want to talk about hazardous materials. This shit will fuck you up big time. One big snort can melt your lungs or blind you right freakin' now! A short whiff can clear a stuffy nose real quick but it gets stuffier later.
The season only lasts for 6-8 weeks every spring and fall but I get 18 hours a day with overtime after ten. $23/hour regular time and you can do the rest of the math. I live on an acreage and park the truck in my driveway. Can't do that in town even with a water truck.
This fall will be my 10th season and knock on wood as free of drama as the last nine. I had a lot more fun when I hauled propane. Gotta match?!
Gotta go. C'ya l8tr
As I work up the cola I trim out anything with glands on it and separate each bud from the stalk for curing. It takes me a couple of hours to trim enough bud to get an ounce of dry. I'm a fussy old fart.
I use butane to get the best honey. The pot can next be used to get an oil extraction with iso-propanol, methanol or petroleum ether. A quick methyl hydrate extraction can be cleaned up with a bit of petroleum ether and a freezer. If you want to know more, ask.
I'm going to try mixing some honey oil with kief to see if I can make some decent hash. Any thoughts?
I have two analytical balances that are good to one ten thousands of a gram and have lots of stuff to experiment with so I plan on keeping records and will let you all know how it works out.
I'm building a new condenser coil for my home built still and will record it in pictures along with my butane extraction method for later posting here.
Distilling petroleum ether from camp stove fuel is extremely hazardous as is butane extraction for honey oil and should not be undertaken if you tend to be a klutz.
I use my still to purify vodka to 97% for tinctures and it is just as dangerous to do that as it is to make pet-ether. None of this stuff is for the faint of heart as one forgotten thing is all it takes to blow yourself to kingdom come.
I loaned a buddy most of my lab gear to make oil from leaves with. Three 2L boiling balls, three still heads, three water cooled condensers plus all related equipment went up in smoke when dumbass walked in with a lit cigarette. Four or five skin grafts later fixed him up OK. He's gone to me but I sure miss my gear!
Lots of fun playing with this stuff until it goes tits-up. I'll be back on the truck delivering anhydrous ammonia to the farmers in a week or so. You want to talk about hazardous materials. This shit will fuck you up big time. One big snort can melt your lungs or blind you right freakin' now! A short whiff can clear a stuffy nose real quick but it gets stuffier later.
The season only lasts for 6-8 weeks every spring and fall but I get 18 hours a day with overtime after ten. $23/hour regular time and you can do the rest of the math. I live on an acreage and park the truck in my driveway. Can't do that in town even with a water truck.
This fall will be my 10th season and knock on wood as free of drama as the last nine. I had a lot more fun when I hauled propane. Gotta match?!
Gotta go. C'ya l8tr
OldMedUser
Formerly Known as LabRat
I spent three and a half years getting my diploma in Environmental Chemistry and have the diploma and $30,000 student loan debt to prove it! lol
The chemistry for extractions, distillations and purification are simple enough for an intelligent, handy person to learn and apply to good end.
Even isomerization is easy with lab glassware or home made equipment if you know what the basic principles are.
Distilling highly flammable solutions is fraught with danger and best left to trained persons. Distilling perfectly good booze out of RV antifreeze is fun and saves a ton of cash if you like to get pissed. Chinese cooking wine is a great source for cheap booze too. Once it's distilled it's vodka and half the price or less than the real thing. Screw Smirnoff's!
Some sugar, yeast and water can brew up to 20% alcohol. 16% with bread yeast. Feed the CO2 to your grow room for a free plant booster! I use the 5 USGal blue jugs and love watching my plants bud out while my liver sues for separate maintenance.
All you need to know about distillation can be found at ...
Home Distillation of Alcohol
Go nuts! I did and I feel so much better.
i am currently working on my undergraduate degree in social work, however my first love is science and i love chemistry.ive been contimplating going for a second major in chemistry just for fun but i havnet decided yet
Parallax view
New Member
I still have a basic questions / answers and want to make sure it is correct. Do you trim right after removing the entire cola from the plant?? Do you separate each bud and then trim or leave it on to form one massive cola?? Do you trim only the larger "fan" leaves left, meaning, the smaller 3 leaf stems, not the original large 5 and 7 leaves that have either already been trimmed or have fallen off naturally??? Many questions, many questions.
OldMedUser
Formerly Known as LabRat
My preferred method is to cut the big colas off of one plant at a time if they are different but if clones and all the same it doesn't matter. I toss the large fan leaves in the compost bucket and take about enough bud to fill a small tobacco tube box lined with waxed paper.
I then sit down my trimmers and starting from the bottom up I closely trim each bud and toss the manicured end result into the box. The trim stays in a pile then goes into a paper bag for drying. When I get to the cola I separate the buds from the main stem and manicure them one at a time.
The box and the waxed paper are punched with holes at random and pre-weighed with the date, type of bud, gross and tare weights on a sticky note.. Then I usually stack them loosely under the bottom shelf in the grow room for curing. I turn the buds over and gently mix every day for the first week or so so they don't clump up and go mouldy.
After a week I'll weigh them again and note the weight. I already know pretty close to the finish weight from practice. You end up with 20-25% of the start weight when trimmed fresh off the plant. I use 23% for my guesses and get within a few tenths of a gram almost every time. The main thing is to know when they stop losing weight. Then they go into Mason jars and are opened a couple of times a day for a few days then reducing frequency for another week or so. You get a feel for it after a while.
It's a fussy, time consuming way to do it and I would find a better way if I ever went bigger but it's a labour of love and worth the time IMO. The boxes and waxed paper can be reused so it saves time the second go around.
I find that trimming as you harvest is the easiest and for me has always given good results. It's easier to trim when the material is all plumped up. The last harvest I let them dry on the line, then trimmed. It was a bigger pain in the ass and the cure was shit compared to my regular method.
I like to get a lot of frosty trim as I love making kief and honey oil. If you don't you can do the trim in half the time and leave more trim on the buds. It gets you just as high as everything else so why not.
I'm smoking some primo honey between paragraphs and getting all messed up. I did a butane extraction in my homemade Honey Bee.
Hope that helps. Have fun.
Trim immediately after harvest, while the buds are still alive and not all limp and wilted. It helps to not take a whole plant at a time--better to take buds as they mature (check trichomes), place them in beer flats, no more than two layers deep. Each trimmer gets a flat to trim as soon as the buds come off the plant. Big fans come off first and placed into a big paper bag. Next, go for the little fans that stick out from the budlets. I prefer to cut these off at the bottom of its stem (which I call the "neck"), not at the top, and not across the leaves themselves. I do this because this is where the main stem will leak moisture, and I want this moisture to off-gas inside the bud for my particular curing process. Once those are off, do a gentle shaving of the single leaves sticking out of the bud. Not too close, as there are (or should be if it's dank) lots of trichomes stuck on them near their base. Then you're done and ready for drying. Hope this is helpful....
