[Treetroit City]

Do you guys hang and dry in a light filled room?

[moose eater]

Originally Posted by Treetroit City

Do you guys hang and dry in a light filled room?

I don't hang plants at all after/during harvest. I take manageable length stems with buds/colas attached, trim with scissors by hand, pack fairly tightly, side by side, single layer, in large pizza boxes (new when purchased, and never used for pizza; figured I should add that), open the lids for a few days tucking the 'wings' to the outside of the box in order to hold the box minimally open at the front, then after several days, when minimum shrinkage to the material from drying has created less density to the layer of bud in the box, close the lid to slow the drying down.

As written earlier elsewhere, you can get a dry finished weight of 3-4 ozs. in most of the larger boxes, and you can stack them up to 3 boxes high, alternating the opening of the lids so they stack straight despite the angled lids, and by limiting the stacks to 3 high, avoid squishing or crushing the contents.

With the drying stacked boxes, routinely move lower boxes to the top, and boxes on top to the bottom of the stack, and so forth, throughout the process.

When superficially dry to touch (but still moist in the center of the buds), I bag into gallon zip-locks, sealing them over-night, or up to a couple days, in order to reach equal distribution of the remaining moisture. Then gently return to the trays/boxes, lids again closed. When they're springy dry, not bone dry, place back in gallon zip bags, or what ever they're going to cure in, and place several of those bags inside unscented kitchen trash bags, typing them shut, for about 2 weeks or so, then vacuum seal and freeze.

May sound tacky, but has worked quite well for me and others for a couple of decades now.

You can simultaneously dry up to 5 lbs in 20 boxes this way, stacked three boxes to a stack, 3-4 oz to a box (dry-weight). I use a chef's rack or one of the 4'x4' grow cabinets to stack them on.

No direct light through the process, and the room they're stacked in gets filtered air movement at a rate of over 400 cfm, in an area measuring about 20'x12'.

Probably more info than you wanted...

Edit: When the buds are moved from the boxes to the gallon bags the very first time, or shortly before, they are hand-trimmed ('finish clipped') from stems at that time.

Originally Posted by Speed of green

i mean that the plants have not evolved to expect three days of darkness, so i doubt the darkness promotes any benefit.

The whole idea of growing massive, un-pollinated colas is based around subverting & stressing the plant's evolution/expectations, for whatever that's worth.

[Mikell]

Originally Posted by thesloppy

The whole idea of growing massive, un-pollinated colas is based around subverting & stressing the plant's evolution/expectations, for whatever that's worth.

Worth a lot.

How many people complain they don't want to stress their plants by doing "blah blah blah"?

Without pollen, the entire flower cycle is one big ol' batch of stress.

[Douglas.Curtis]

Originally Posted by moose eater

I don't hang plants at all after/during harvest. I take manageable length stems with buds/colas attached, trim with scissors by hand, pack fairly tightly, side by side, single layer, in large pizza boxes (new when purchased, and never used for pizza; figured I should add that)

Did the pizza thing once and I much prefer the results of a dark, slow dry of hanging branches.

[moose eater]

Originally Posted by Douglas.Curtis

Did the pizza thing once and I much prefer the results of a dark, slow dry of hanging branches.

Just a matter of space here. The trich loss to the boxes is minimal overall.

And the curing, etc., can be slowed down by the methods I referenced.

The bldg was 'shrunk' from original plans in both foot-print dimensions (L and W) by 4 ft. each way, and while it doesn't come up often, there've been a number of times I've wish I'd sprung for that extra sq. ft-age. Greater area for more mothers, greater area for processing, one of the cabinets would've been larger, etc.

But the boxes work well for me now, & for quite some time. No complaints on the outcomes from others.