Curing on the vine......no chop, whole plant

I pull my girls, trim the root balls back to a manageable size, wrap the balls in plastic ( to keep them from contaminating the plant material) and then use Tyvek to create an envelope to contain the plants themselves. I use Tyvek because of its vapor barrier effect; if the plant becomes too dry I can add celery, iceberg lettuce, even a wet cotton towel or other neutral odor water source to moisten them back up, and the Tyvek allows the excess water to breathe out of the envelope without allowing other vapors, odors, etc to enter and contaminate the plant. I only trim off what I need; the rest is left in whole form on the hanging plant. This causes the plants to count against your legal plant total, but not your usable amount total. Because I grow in a greenhouse, I harvest very large plants, so this technique is a must for me, as one plant can produce up to 4 pounds; grow 50 plants in this manner and you can see why I do this. And LEO has seen and inspected my operation and know I do not violate the law in any manner.

This is standard protocol for us.

Always hang whole and trim dry. As has been said it is critical for taste and flavor.

When lives hang on the quality of your herb you do whatever possible to make sure it has the funk. Last time we traded a slightly grassy elbow of ogk to the aliens fukushima happened the next day.

Mr. Greengenes said:

It is absolutely true that leaving the plant intact with all leaves on greatly improves the quality of the dried bud..

Click to expand...

Gonna have to do an experiment in someone's garden then.

Personally.... my shit was always the stinkiest, stickiest, dank shit I've ever come across. Can't imagine it getting better EXCEPT... there was that one dispensary in Chatsworth that got shut down had better quality. That was some F'n FIRE! Wow!
(Out of all the L.A. and surrounding dispensaries.. they were the only ones with real cannabis. The rest, as far as I'm concerned, was just marijuana *shrug*)

Maybe they dried with the whole plant intact?

Stay Safe!

I always cut the finished plants branches and then remove large fan leaves and cut all small leaves to end with a complete manicure. Then I hang the branches of bud on a line in a cool dark room to dry slowly. Then, when crispy on the outside I take them down still on the branches and sweat them in a garbage bag over night. Next day I take them out and they are damp again. I hang and repeat the process untill the dryness is reached that I find to be best. Lastly I cut the buds off the stems and cure in jars or paper bags.

I have been doing this for years as it is the quickest way to make a large amount of bud finished and ready for consumption. I have tried drying in tact on the plant and found the finished product to be a little better in tast and probably a small increase in yield, but when dealing with such large amounts of weed I found the difference not worth the hastle.

So, I do believe it to be a better way if you want to make the most of your weed, but my way was not much inferior - almost to the point I could hardly tast the difference. It was more clean on the lungs as the dry time was much longer. I just found it to be a pain in the butt to trim when already dry because the leaves each have to be lifted from the bud as they stick to it. I estimate it doulble the work, if not more.

This is only what I have found in doing it only a couple times. I am sure there are ways to stream line the process to make it more efficient, but like I stated already - it wasn't worth the hastle. May be one last attempt with a strain like Purple kush is in order. It does not have as much leaf and should be much easier.

Just my 'long winded' personal experience - hope this helps!

TGT

I let an auto die and dry on the stem (left it in the soil) and it was some of the best smoke I've tried. I did the same with a fem and it was excellent too. But... I'm a newb at this.

Oops... old thread... sorry.