Trimming - wet or dry?

Do you trim wet or dry after you harvest and why? What methods are you using for trimming that lend to your preference?

2 Likes

I do two sets of trimming a wet and dry trim, soon as one plant comes down immediately gets all it’s waterleaf removed, to save time I’ll usually have them buzz a little further than water leaf, hang to dry and after the cure, clean it up a little bit more while it’s dry. So I guess you could say I go both ways.

6 Likes

I avoid wet trimming due to the low humidity and high temps in my area wet trimming causes the plants to dry far to fast. We only remove the largest fan leaves at harvest cut the plant into manageable branches and hang dry for a minimum of 8 days and as long as 12 days when conditions allow us to take our drying time that long. I also noticed that whenever I wet trim the finished cured product always has what I could best describe as a “hay” like smell. I don’t believe I ever get the smell and flavor I want from the wet trimming process. So from my experience we prefer dry trimming hands down. We get a longer drying time better smell and flavor so we decided to go with what yielded better result in our situation. Hope this helps anyone that reads it.

4 Likes

Dry trimming allows you to have 2 other saleable products besides flower: high quality trim for processing and kief. With wet trimming you don’t get that and it’s also very messy with lots of clean up required.

7 Likes

Hey Yall!

Great topic and I love reading the comments so far. Keoni, our Southern Oregon Sales Manager, has been growing for nearly 15 years and has harvested in just about any way you can imagine. Here is his feedback on the topic (http://bit.ly/2vXQjHU). It’s only a couple minutes long.

Of course, we’re a dry trimming company, so take the comments with a grain of salt if you like. We find that the physiological differences between wet and dry trimming are certainly worth noting.

When you trim wet, you’re trimming a flower that has not finished perfecting itself, and you lose too much in the process. If you can imagine your product is 90% done when you harvest, allowing it to dry will allow the trichomes to fully mature and reach that 100% ideal product level. When you wet trim, you’re basically cutting off your product before it has a chance to be 100%.

As you dry, the fan leaves curl up on the flower, which protects the trichomes from damage or falling off entirely, in addition to letting them mature.

Not to mention the ease of harvest. When you dry trim, you can properly store your harvest for much longer and trim when you’re ready, as opposed to rushing through it while it is wet. I’ve seen some cultivators who store their drying (or dried) product untrimmed UNTIL they’re ready to ship it out. Then they trim to order, which also creates a fresher looking product than if you trim right away and then store it.

There are certainly benefits to both and to each their own, but obviously we see a great difference in the two, which is why our entire process is designed around a quality, dry product.

5 Likes