What's the deal with curing?

As mentioned, I've begun the process of trimming smaller "popcorn" buds from my first grow and had a somewhat unpleasent experience last week with some material that I trimmed, hung upside down for several days, then kept in a sealed container for a few more days and then rolled up -- it felt dry and smelled great, but the smoke was harsh and didn't really "work". I returned again to the sages at rollitup to see what was crackin' on the messageboards and I came up with the following:

Curing can seemingly affect potency because often the first time the buds feel "dry", they really aren't. Once they start to cure and sweat, you will see how much moisture is left.

Curing is mostly for aroma and taste, but the first week after "drying" will still have some effect on the potency as the bud fully dries.

If the above is not reason enough, here is a more scientific explanation:

Drying bud converts crude acidic THC from its nonactive form into a neutral pH psychoactive substance. Each THC molecule has to lose it's moisture content in order to become fully psychoactive.

[Editor's note: Starkes suggests up to 95% of the cannabinoids will remain carboxylized in dried and cured plant matter]

When the water exits the bud, the THC becomes slightly different in molecular structure. As Fatima mentioned (See this thread from overgrow.com), heating can make THC readily active by immediately vaporizing the bud's moisture content away. However, as Fatima also mentioned, aging is important too.

First the bud is "dried", but can still contain some moisture within. By using the "cure", the THC slowly becomes psychoactive. Curing builds a more uniformly dried bud with a better burn and taste. Almost all the THC converts to the usable psychoactive cannabinoid over the alotted time, without the degradation from drying the bud rapidly with heat.

Our first weed mama

Okay, it's not from this site, but it's a hot girl chillin in a grow room with a huge spliff -- and she's also a porn actress.

Hmm, pretty serious combination -- she gets paid to have sex and loves smoking weed.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Charlie Laine!

Courtesy of 420 Magazine

Small buds? Ask Ed

I have two plants that are on the verge of being harvested
and sadly, they are a bit spread out -- I am attributing this to the fact that I have used low-power CFL's for the entire grow, but I wanted to know for sure if this was the reason for a small yield. One thing I have read about is removing the smaller bottom buds in order to focus on the top buds, but Ed Rosenthal in Cannibis Culture explodes this myth.

courtesy of Cannabis Culture.com:

Will pruning during flowering increase bud size?

I have a White Widow plant growing indoors that is going into its final stages of flowering ? it should ripen in about two weeks. However, I think I made the mistake of allowing the plant to keep too many branches during the flowering process, and this one 16-inch plant has well over 50 flowering heads. As a result of this, the main tall branches have not budded out as fully as I would have hoped for, while the majority of the buds are small and relatively insignificant.

However, the plant looks very healthy, and is covered in crystals! What can I do to increase the yield at this late stage? The cycle is set at 11 hours of light (down from 12) and some of the hairs are just beginning to turn brown. If I cut some of the smaller buds off, will it help the larger ones grow?

Alex,
London, England

Ed writes:
It's too late to do anything to increase the size of the individual buds. The plant has already expended most of the resources it will use for flowering. Now it is filling out the infrastructure it has already built. Removing some buds now will not make much difference to the remaining ones because the plant does not have much more energy to spend on them. If you removed them now, you would be losing all the resources the plant has already allocated to them.

The buds may not be as cosmetically alluring as larger tighter ones, but you can see from the crystals that they will be potent when used.

On future crops you could manicure the plant a couple of weeks before flowering, two or three weeks after changing the light cycle.

This brings us to the obvious topic of pruning, which we will investigate tomorrow!

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Welcome!

Welcome to Grow Your Own!

Over the next several months I'll be tracking the development of some mongrel seeds, taking your questions, posting pictures and helping you grow the most potent and dankest nugs online!

I don't claim to be an expert, but I'll certainly post some fun pictures of hot girls, ganja and everything else a new gardener needs to keep going.

Our motto here at GYO is "The best high is a homegrown high".

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