Wow that's awsome, if only i could fit all my buds in a food dehydrator. Your idea about the silica gel sounds like something i can try out.Just to be different ... and I am always different
I dry my buds in a food dehydrator, 24 hours on lowest setting on for 15 mins, off for 15 mins ... lucky I have spare timers.
After about 24 hours the buds look crispy and I then put them in jars with a hygrometer. After a little while the residual moisture spreads throughout the buds and the hygrometer lets me know how much moisture is left to remove.
The last lot ended up being about 75% rel humidity once the moisture had equalised.
It is not easy to air dry buds in Queensland when the RH can be over 80% - the buds end up absorbing moisture from the air.
Once the buds have been in jars for a few hours and I know the moisture content, I then introduce sachets of silica gel and suck out the moisture until the RH is 65% ... then I just seal and leave to cure, no need to burp the jars or disturb the buds until smokin time.
When I have an abundance of buds that I want to store I will just drop the RH to 55%, seal and store.
I have found that drying with the food dehydrator produces buds that are indistinguishable from slow dried buds except that slow dried buds have a higher chance of being attacked by mould before they get to the curing stage.
The curing begins after the drying, so having an extended drying time (especially in humid conditions) seems to be a waste of time and a lengthy period when you are smelling out the neighbourhood.
Reducing the drying time to 24 hours (plus a few extra hours of silica gel work) lets me get the buds curing much earlier and therefore lets me smoke the buds much sooner.
I do gots the soul brother.. but ur black?!
Na man, not at all, if yours only take 2-3 days it obviously means your humidity level is low, which in essence when drying is a good thing, and yeah once you open the jars, give em a gentle shake so they move, try not to handle them to much as each time you do so you damage the trichomes, i try to keep my smoke primo and untouched, fully manicured & cured, you really get the deep flavours and full enjoyment from it this way in my opinion. Good luckThanks for that haze, similar to what i've done previously. They seem to dry within 2-3 days where i keep them.... do you recommend moving the buds around while curing or shouldn't it matter?? Also is it a problem that my buds are drying too quickly??
No.Does anyone know if you can reveg an auto after flowering or will it just die?
Scrogging as an art form ...Hi 420, see the steel grate you're sitting your plants on? Next crop, put the plants underneath it and let them grow up thru the screen... You'll get a better yield and they wont grow as high, and your branches will spread horizontally... Scrogging its also known as... Just a little idea I got from looking at your photos.. Peace...
Laceygirl...
The screen is 52cm across.I Know ive said it before Grump's but yes your scrogging is good enough to be art, for the next pic you up load to your thread, do you think you could you add a tape measure across the circumfrence of that scrog, or something us sub's can gauge against in relation to the actual size of her, cos she's a beauty!
Oh and Hazey those cola's should start densing up real nicely, congrats on the clean grow your Lst is so semetrical, looks great!! after staring and marvelling at it i noticed the use of cable ties....nice touch and works a treat. Can't wait for the bud porn pics, give us some real dirty filthy frosty stuff, you know dripping wet with resin and the like lol
That ScrOG is Magic Bud, not Red Dragon - it'll be a few months before I ScrOG my next Red Dragon although I need to do it soon as I want to try out my own feminised seeds.4" nugg's x 36~ sites of red dragon heads is fine by me! plus when people are growing 2 foot cola's people tend to forget that in that dry weight there is or has a massive and i mean MASSIVE stem running through the guts, untill you trim every nugget off of it, your dry smokable (chop it in the moulli) weight is substantially lowered and is smokabilly incorrect hahah (i just made a new word/meaning if ya get it?)
Edit: thanks for the memory jog! 520mm rang a bell!