This season there was alot of talk about outdoor drying, meaning drying in a outdoor enviroment under a rainshield like a thick tree canopy, a tarp, or some other roof, but with no heat to help strip moisture.
Years ago I tried to dry my buds outdoors, I set up a tarp to shield from rain and hung the buds under the tarp. After about 10 days the buds were still nearly as wet as they were when I hung them and I decided to move them indoors before mold set in.
Again this year I attempted outdoor drying, this time I left them hanging longer than 10 days, after about 2 weeks I noticed that mold was forming on the surface of the buds. The mold was not the species that causes bud-rot, this mold was the type you might find growing on any cellulose bearing item that stays wet too long, like a old news paper or a lost t-shirt laying in the backyard.
At any rate, it may not have been bud-rot, but it was still mold. If I had no ethics, I'm sure I could have sold this bud to unsuspecting smokers, and they may have not known the difference, but I don't do that. I couldn't watch my freinds smoke the mold.
At any rate, I decided to do a thread explaining outdoor bud drying, and why it doesn't work in some enviroments. There is no denying that it does work for some growers in some places, but some folks in some climates should take care!!
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When we are drying our buds we are essentially removing water from our buds, this make the buds able to burn in a pipe or joint, and also makes storing the buds easier, since our main enemy -MOLD- needs a certain level of moisture to live and grow.
We dry the buds by allowing the moisture to leave the buds through the act of evaporation. Evaporation is the process of water turning from its liquid form into its gaseous form(steam, mist, clouds, fog). The opposite of evaporation is condensation(dew,rain,snow).
Once moisture is evaporated into gas(or vapor), it is suspended in the air, and now it is measured as humidity. For our case, we are mainly concerned with what is known as relative humidity, this being the amount of moisture the air can carry at a given temperature.
Generally the higher the temperature, the more moisture the air can absorb and hold. As the temp drops, the air is able to absorb and hold less and less moisture(and the rate of drying drops to a crawl). The temperature at which the air can no longer absorb more moisture is known as the dew point, as long as the temperature is significantly above the dew point, evaporation can still occur, when the temp drops to or below the dew point the opposite will happen, and the water will condense into dew or precipitation.
Another thing to realize is that simply because it is raining doesn't mean that the humidity is high. I have seen many members here declare that outdoor drying works well even in high humidity, their reasoning for this is that their buds dried even when it was raining!
The problem with this reasoning is that the presence of rain at ground level only means that the temp has dropped below the dewpoint at the level in the atmosphere where the rain is forming, the dewpoint can still remain low enough to allow evaporation at ground level despite the falling rain. Repeat, falling rain does not mean high humidity at ground level.
The bottom line is that how well outdoor drying works depends on your local climate. If temps are staying high, like mostly over 50-60F,and relative humidity is low(below 70% or so) chances are good that this method will work for you, but the lower the temp, and the higher the relative humidity, the less and less chance you have of getting your bud dry before mold forms.
If I were to try and dry my buds outdoors in temps below 60F, I would want to see humidity quite low, like 60% or less.
Years ago I tried to dry my buds outdoors, I set up a tarp to shield from rain and hung the buds under the tarp. After about 10 days the buds were still nearly as wet as they were when I hung them and I decided to move them indoors before mold set in.
Again this year I attempted outdoor drying, this time I left them hanging longer than 10 days, after about 2 weeks I noticed that mold was forming on the surface of the buds. The mold was not the species that causes bud-rot, this mold was the type you might find growing on any cellulose bearing item that stays wet too long, like a old news paper or a lost t-shirt laying in the backyard.
At any rate, it may not have been bud-rot, but it was still mold. If I had no ethics, I'm sure I could have sold this bud to unsuspecting smokers, and they may have not known the difference, but I don't do that. I couldn't watch my freinds smoke the mold.
At any rate, I decided to do a thread explaining outdoor bud drying, and why it doesn't work in some enviroments. There is no denying that it does work for some growers in some places, but some folks in some climates should take care!!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
When we are drying our buds we are essentially removing water from our buds, this make the buds able to burn in a pipe or joint, and also makes storing the buds easier, since our main enemy -MOLD- needs a certain level of moisture to live and grow.
We dry the buds by allowing the moisture to leave the buds through the act of evaporation. Evaporation is the process of water turning from its liquid form into its gaseous form(steam, mist, clouds, fog). The opposite of evaporation is condensation(dew,rain,snow).
Once moisture is evaporated into gas(or vapor), it is suspended in the air, and now it is measured as humidity. For our case, we are mainly concerned with what is known as relative humidity, this being the amount of moisture the air can carry at a given temperature.
Generally the higher the temperature, the more moisture the air can absorb and hold. As the temp drops, the air is able to absorb and hold less and less moisture(and the rate of drying drops to a crawl). The temperature at which the air can no longer absorb more moisture is known as the dew point, as long as the temperature is significantly above the dew point, evaporation can still occur, when the temp drops to or below the dew point the opposite will happen, and the water will condense into dew or precipitation.
Another thing to realize is that simply because it is raining doesn't mean that the humidity is high. I have seen many members here declare that outdoor drying works well even in high humidity, their reasoning for this is that their buds dried even when it was raining!
The problem with this reasoning is that the presence of rain at ground level only means that the temp has dropped below the dewpoint at the level in the atmosphere where the rain is forming, the dewpoint can still remain low enough to allow evaporation at ground level despite the falling rain. Repeat, falling rain does not mean high humidity at ground level.
The bottom line is that how well outdoor drying works depends on your local climate. If temps are staying high, like mostly over 50-60F,and relative humidity is low(below 70% or so) chances are good that this method will work for you, but the lower the temp, and the higher the relative humidity, the less and less chance you have of getting your bud dry before mold forms.
If I were to try and dry my buds outdoors in temps below 60F, I would want to see humidity quite low, like 60% or less.
