This is my second grow from home and after a few hours searching through these boards I couldn’t exactly find what I was looking for although I’ve received some great second hand advice from them. I just test dried a clone I had which was in its 3rd gen so it was more for oils and extractions, but the weather conditions aren’t optimal so I’ve considered a dry/harvest tent but haven’t found any good ones for the entire drying process. If you guys have any tips for me because I have about another 1-2 weeks of harvesting for my top buds particularly and I don’t want to ruin these too. If you guys have any advice on whether I should harvest sooner/later I will attack pictures of both my plants which are different strains but created at the same time.
Welcome to GN. Your plants do look like they are ready to harvest. If you are using them for oils and extractions you can skip the entire drying process and do the extraction at harvest?
Drying and curing the buds is your other option, below is a nice drying rack that you could use to calculate the time to dry, roughly about 7 - 10 days depending on your environment.
Once dried you would want them to go through curing and then store the manicured buds in airtight jars.
Shout if you have any further questions.
If you can, dry in an environment that you can lock-in the temperature and humidity using controllers to keep your setpoints exactly where you want.
My drying space is set to 62% RH and 18 degrees celsius. I have a humidifier that only turns on when things get too dry, and a dehumidifier to dry things out if they get too wet. I also control the temperature to keep things where I want them.
This way you can keep a harvest in your drying space for a few week or a few months and not have to worry about the end quality.
Thanks for the feedback! I have chosen to dry upside down and have been drying for about 24 hrs now. My environment isn’t giving a good level of humidity so I purchased a small humidifier to give it extra humidity. The humidity can go as low as 25% and it’s been at a solid 30% range most of the day today which is worrying me because at the rate of this humidity they’ll dry too fast and my environment isn’t budging.
Can you get them into a smaller area so it’s less climate to control?
I actually have them in the smallest and darkest space I can keep them in with no polluted air or dust
Are you using an entire room? If so I highly suggest making a fort out of cardboard or garbage bags or something. Just big enough for the flower the humidifier and some airspace around everything. Smaller area to keep humid.
It’s in an 8 feet long x 3 1/2 feet wide space with a door cracked for ventilation
The humidifier has brought it up to a 44% consistent rh