Drying and Curing in low RH areas?

[HOPS5K]

I live in the mountains and the weather here can change on a dime..form hot to cold in minutes sometimes.

How do I deal with this uncontrollable factor when it comes to drying and curing my medical herb properly?

Here's what I know so far: Temperature is important, keep it totally dark, some sort of air movement (?in a dry env. buds dry hella fast.?).

my last harvest was okay, but the smell and taste was wayyyy off..got me lit, but it wasn't that great.

I am getting a hygrometer to measure the RH in jars, too..I will follow Simon's method, but how do I adjust for low RH areas?

thanks for the help in advance

 

[Mia]

Humidifier.

 

[Adrift]

i dry my buds in very dry conditions, as long as you flush your herb nice and it is grown well you should still have tasty buds with a faster dry, mine usualy are ready to trim in 3 or 4 days, then they go one more day till stems snap. and walaaaa, tasty herb

hope this helps!

exactly how fast are they drying would you say?

 

[HOPS5K]

Adrift - I would say they dry to the point where I can jar them (bud is kinda crunchy (?) and the stem is still semi flexible) in 3 days..that is with the fan on in the room just circulating the air and not directly on the buds/stems. Without the fan on, it was more like 7 or 8 days I believe to get the bud dryish/crunchy and the stems semi flexible.

 

[Mia]

Slow your air movement down, reduce your fan's speed.
You don't need a lott of air flow for drying, you just don't want stagnate air.
If things are drying fast you're going to have to pay attention and put them into mason jars or something similar. At that point the moisture is trapped in the container, and you can work your way down.

 

[HOPS5K]

oh yeah, I forgot to mention this little fun fact..haha...somehow or another, my plants all managed to be female right...but they ended up getting seeds...I started four seeds that came from seeded dispensary bud...there were no males out of the four...

Did I mess up and do this via light leaks or is this some sort of genetic thing? Were they feminized seeds (?how would I even know?)?

One of them even autoflowered on me so I have no idea what happened.

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

Yeah, when you plant bag-seed, you get female plants with a genetic propensity to develop male sexual traits and drop pollen, and male plants who are in a hurry to drop pollen before they can be culled.

If the humidity is too low for a controlled drying, you can close your harvested bud in paper grocery bags. This limits air circulation but allows moisture to slowly pass through.

 

[Mia]

May be genetics or light leaks.
How do you know?
Eliminate whether it's light leaks.
Go into your room during the day time with the lights off, sit there for a couple minutes and look for leaks......

 

[HOPS5K]

thanks for all the fast responses

@Mia - as fas as slowing down the fan speed..I can't...it's a really small fan with one speed. Could I possibly just keep it going at a distance and not directly on the buds in the area I dry in?

@Crudader Rabbit - still some good bud, lol ...growing mexican schwag up in here ... hahahaha

@Adrift - I think harvest is still maybe 2 weeks (?) away...some cloudy trichs, but no amber yet..waiting for the amber trichs before I harvest...got one tall lanky sativa and the others are indica dominant hybrids..they look sooo tasy and crystally..they smell awesome this time around too.

 

[Mia]

Yes don't have airflow directly on the buds. You don't want them to dry that fast... Point it at a corner of the room for instance.....

Edit: you may not even need the fan in the first place. Just remember no stagnate air....