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washing cannabis

antheis

Active member
Veteran
i'd never thought to do this, but it makes good enough sense.
i couldn't see it washing off trichs. they are mostly oil and probably hydrophobic.
i think the knee-jerk aversion to it is because we've all made bubble hash. but fresh trichs are much more resilient than when they are dried out (like they are when you make any hash).
 
G

Gr33nSanta

Jorge Cerventes method worked out somewhat for me last season, outdoors Washing away powder mildew

Ive done it once years ago, it worked great for me. I bought organic peroxide and dried the herb really well. I think I ended up giving it away but Ive smoked some and was impressed with the smoke.
 

Phaeton

Speed of Dark
Veteran
I'm not saying against it, if you're talking to me. I'm just saying, doesn't it stand to reason that swishing your buds around in some water is going to knock a substantial amount of the good stuff off? Somebody tell me I'm wrong and why, and I might try it. I like cleanliness as much as the next pot head.

I'm another guy been doing this for years. I also do a full ten day water cure, but usually by special request only. Occasionally I will treat myself and the trimmers with a batch, but it sells poorly due to cost and lack of any flavor at all.

Dry trim is done with wet hands and scissors. Dipping both regularly helps preserve trichomes by not sticking them to fingers and scissors. We no longer gets grams of finger and scissor hash from the harvest.

Wet trim seems to be called 'bud washing', new term for me. The buds have the fan leaves removed and are tossed into a bucket of clean water four at a time, for reference these are usually 8 to 10 gram buds. As the buds are trimmed they are returned to the bucket, spending about an hour in the water.
If a one ounce cola is being trimmed it is done alone with lots of dipping and then left an extra half hour, but most buds are quarter ounce.
This removes house dust and a small amount of chlorophyll. The bud comes out just a bit smoother and still has flavor. No trichomes have ever been lost but I suppose it would be possible if Bubble Hash bashing was employed in the bucket along with ice.

Just an hour in the water makes a difference. I include photos to show the subtle differences. Although both are 'Black Russian' the wet trim is relabeled 'Old Russia' to keep it separate.
The dry trim is greener, the longer it spends in the water the browner it gets.

It all started with a trimmer dipping her hands, scissors, and the bud in the water. Dipping the bud kept all wet for ten minutes or more at a time, just dipping the fingers needed done every minute.
But it not only eased trimming, it improved the bud, in my opinion. The fact that buds are offered either way shows variety in folks tastes.
 

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  • Dry, wet trim, the wet is renamed Old Russia to separate it from Black Russian dry trim.jpg
    Dry, wet trim, the wet is renamed Old Russia to separate it from Black Russian dry trim.jpg
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  • Washed bud on left, dry trim on right.jpg
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  • Washed bud on top, dry trim on bottom.jpg
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FizzyB

New member
I've seen a video on YouTube of the guy rinsing his harvested buds in water and hydrogen peroxide because he had some issues with powdery mildew.

Peace.

Jorge cervantes has a video of washing buds to remove power mildew.

Way back, I followed his advice after a pm issue.
Saved my harvest.

Makes sense to cleanse outdoor weed or wash of pm but otherwise there's zero reason to put water to buds IMO. I would never do that shit to my indoor grown flowers



I feel the need to chime in on cervantes here, and anyone who has followed this method. I tried this once after a pm issue. I got it lab tested and it failed, poorly. I suggest anyone who does this to get it lab tested. In this scenario, if it isn't worth being lab tested it isn't worth being smoked.
 
Like above, i do find the washing for PM thing to be less than scientific, and getting a lab test is the only way to know if it truly works. Tons of variables though in how it's done that could effect the end result, but no way to measure a lot of that. I do believe that a minor population of mold in the final product can potentially be a non-issue and pretty much harmless. Again though, how do you really measure that to be sure?

I will say that i've seen folks do the wash and get a clean lab test, but you need alot more data than that to say if it is truly a viable method. Sample size of 200 instances would convince me that it works, otherwise it is a maybe.
 
Also i can attest that room temp water will not have much of an effect on trichs. Cold water should be avoided. I've also done a 7 day water cure and the trichs were generally retained.
 

yts farmer

Well-known member
Veteran
I feel the need to chime in on cervantes here, and anyone who has followed this method. I tried this once after a pm issue. I got it lab tested and it failed, poorly. I suggest anyone who does this to get it lab tested. In this scenario, if it isn't worth being lab tested it isn't worth being smoked.

All that jc was doing was removing the pm you can see with your eyes. To kill off an outbreak you need to use a systemic treatment. A systemic treatment will be active for around 4 weeks so in theory you shouldnt use it 4 weeks before harvest, but hell go one better DONT use it in flower period If you start noticing pm starting to form your plant was infected a week or 2 before.

And on the other talk about washing cannabis where someone said he was getting dust and what not off his harvested buds, i saw a pic in a members gallery just the other day where an ant had climbed onto his bud and got stuck on the trichomes, thats what i think would happen to dust .

Washing cannabis isnt something i will do myself, but to those that choose to and are happy with what there doing then thats all that matters.

Peace.
 

SiR-GrOwS-aLoT

Active member
trichs dont just rinse away, however some of the terpines are water soluble, so to preserve the plants full spectrum of flavours i would not rinse indoor bud.
 
G

Gr33nSanta

It rained today plants have to start growing resin all over again ... joke

Most resin heads are well attached to the flowers. Also, most of the resin heads on a flower are on the inside of it. Sure you might lose somewhere between 0.5%-1% of overall terps and some over ripe resin heads that just fall off, but you could never tell the difference if you were to smoke the flowers.

This gives me an idea, next time I have time, I ll poor the water into a 25 micron bag and take a look at what is there.

Maybe I have a little OCD in me but I can not hang a bud that I did not wash now.
 
I did this a cpl years ago. I was onboard with it. Like Santa's joke..outdoor croppers might attest tropical storm season can bring cold hard rain when you don't want it late September to October can drench a bud on the plane pretty good. Considering all you really had to do was give it a good shake the next day, it smoked as it should.
So yeah a controlled dunkage in ro water don't really seem like rocket science. I'm not a cash cropper so I did not mind the science. Definitely some loss of extra special spice but id say that was a %5 decrease in esthetics over all. I used h202 cause o mold , and spray. Enjoyed my results.
 
T

thesloppy

I did this once or twice when I had a breakout of bugs in my cabs, and it seemed to work well enough.
 

TicTac

New member
Doc buds method works for me . Wouldn't think of not washing my bud ,Ever since the first I tried it. Don't care to smoke anything else. I read these pages and people are spraying all kinds of shit on their cannabis, organic or not I don't smoke bat shit,worm shit or anything some people spray on their plants,even if you don't spray there is so much crude in air indoors or out, especially out .(to stick to those beautiful crystalline bud) I have wonderful smooth tasty and clean cannabis to smoke . You don't have to do your whole crop to figure it out. Try a few small branches and see for yourself what comes off and that stuff that's left behind sure don't look like trich's to me. IMO if you don't wash ,you're the missing something
 

Charlie flood

New member
its the godly thing the snobs r doing for their HEALTH,although if they r grown next 2 a dustyass dirt road it might be a very very good thing for ones lungs.
 
I wash after every grow and dunk after I trim to remove excess leaves and trace of any other material might of jumped on. Have you tried water curring. You leave the buds submerged for about a week change the water every other day. Then dry them out and there you go
 
I did some buds and they look like before, but the water from two little branches is dirty :) (outdoor, far from roads.)
it was a little early testbranch, now i know what to do with my heavy sprayed OD plants, thats the point, im Organics, but i dont like to smoke what i spay anyways. great technique and i heard about washing buds years ago, thats not new.
still happy to read an update on this.
RO water is a must, Destilled water will pull to strong and tap water will add calcium, chlorine, fluoride instead of removing it depending on your city/country.
maybe tap is good for the first wash and after that final RO wash..
i used Ro and it worked fine, same time for drying as usual maybe even shorter!?
 

Spaventa

...
Veteran
I would only grow outdoors under plastic with filtered ventilation, mainly for environment control and pest prevention but also to keep the indoor quality product. Its more about preventing it from becoming weathered than dirty. There is no scenario in which I would allow my plants to get contaminated enough to ever need washing.
 
I wash in multiple 100 gallon reservoirs. Line 3 of them up full of water. Start washing in the first and end up in last. Then hang them to dry.You will see a lot of dust and dirt come off. Once you do this you will never go back.

TCG - Two Cousins Genetics
 

MJPassion

Observer
ICMag Donor
Veteran
I don't necessarily wash buds on purpose but sometimes a person just has to!

On one occasion I got PM & did it.
A day or two previous to cutting the plant down I gave it a dilute H2O2 spray. After I cut the plant down I put it in the shower & gave it a continuous rinse for abot 5 to 10 minutes. Therr was zero external evidence of PM on the plant after this was done & I smoked plenty of it & never once tasted any mold/mildew flavors. It doesn't take much mold/mildew to bring their flavors out so I figured it was ok. Not to mention that PM does not produce afflatoxins(sp?) like bud rot does.

On another occasion I got a hell of a rain storm & about 6 or 8 plants got flodded about 1/3 their height. Buds were filled with debris from the rushing flood of water coming down the waterway. Grass, sticks, dirt, other plants leaves, you name it. If it was upstream from these plants they were contaminated with it. The same method from above was employed to wash all the debris from as much of the plants as possible. I lost about 2-3 lbs of buds to the debris that wouldn't wash out but the buds weren't necessarily lost for good... Dirty buds were given away to a dude that doesn't care what he puts in his system. He&friends smoked on 'em for several months with zero complaints.

Bottom line is that washing works.

It also should have very little, if any, effect on trichome loss.
Trichomes are "plastic". By that, I mean they're flexible when warm & brittle when cold.
 
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