Hanging entire plant vs. Individual stems/colas.

Does it make a difference in hanging an entire plant instead of trimming off braches of my ladies to hang separately? I did an outdoor grow this year and have some giant ladies that will take some effort to hang somewhere in their entirety, so that’s why I was wondering if just taking branches of and hanging them separately to save space would be better than trying to move a x-mas tree into position. The concern I had was that when they are drying upside down will the buds suck the rest of the available good stuff from the plant and if so then I imagine I would want to leave as much main stem and such as possible. Not a bad problem to have I guess ; ) Thanks!!

machinegreenkelly said:

Does it make a difference in hanging an entire plant instead of trimming off braches of my ladies to hang separately? I did an outdoor grow this year and have some giant ladies that will take some effort to hang somewhere in their entirety, so that’s why I was wondering if just taking branches of and hanging them separately to save space would be better than trying to move a x-mas tree into position. The concern I had was that when they are drying upside down will the buds suck the rest of the available good stuff from the plant and if so then I imagine I would want to leave as much main stem and such as possible. Not a bad problem to have I guess ; ) Thanks!!

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Absolutly ok to take branches. I used to do whole plants because i heard a rumor that you need to drain all the shit in the stems into buds. not the case. you will not lose any potency/taste ect. cut her into branches.

Whatever works for you, there's no right or wrong way, my preference is hanging the whole plant but I've been doing that for a long time, can't be bothered with hanging individual branches/extra work, it'll dry either way.

yeah one thing is try to keep humidty around 60% when drying. ive found that is more important than how you chop it up. nice slow cure and dry makes for some killer smoke.

green_machine_two9er said:

yeah one thing is try to keep humidty around 60% when drying. ive found that is more important than how you chop it up. nice slow cure and dry makes for some killer smoke.

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Agreed, the slowest you can dry the better, regardless of method. I'd think that hanging individual branches will dry faster if you don't adjust your airflow, that's about the only down side I see to hanging individual branches. With the sugar leaves still on and the whole plant hung I think it slows down the process a bit. But too high humidity with the whole plant process could introduce mould issues. 60'sh is where you want the plant to end up so 60% RH is a good target.

Sounds good. Thanks for the help and the additional info.

I hang the branches....I trim them good then hang..when dried to likeing I cut buds and put in a 5 gallon bucket with a hygrometer....after 24 hours i check the humidity in there..if low I just add a piece of stem and check again in 12 hours..if to high take stem out...it will even off soon after...after a few weeks jar it....

The difference between hanging the entire plant or colas isn't that large especially if you hang them together. If you'd spread them out much more than the whole plant would be it would obviously dry faster. Sometimes the plant is too packed when hung up side down, i.e. with colas to close together, in which case I cut off a few colas to thin it out and allow for better airflow. There's no noticeable difference in the results.

I like hanging the whole plant but it's sort of negligible to cut off branches when you're talking about such a big plant. Usually when people hang a whole plant they're talking indoor with a smaller plant. Odds are one branch off your bigguns would have just as much branch as a smaller whole plant has stems. (... if that made sense.)

I will say though that when it comes to smaller plants I don't like to go too far with breaking up the plant, I have noticed slightly faster dry times by splitting a plant up too much. But really my peeve is more with trimming pre-dry... that's a lot of exposed internal moisture being released at once and I can't abide by that if I want a slow dry. I DEFINITELY noticed a faster dry when I made that mistake...

I hate hanging the plant. It gets "soggy" and so hard to trim. I've done it so many different ways with reviews from my patients and I found it doesn't really matter how you trim, as long as you dry properly. Now, I fully trim everything before drying, cut up all the big buds into smaller ones etc so there isn't much stem left...when it is dry it's pretty much ready to store without further trimming. Some would argue this makes it dry out too fast, but my patients have never noticed a difference in the burn/taste/potency so I do it that way. As for drying, like others have said the best way really is to slow dry at 50-60% humidity...closer to 50% if you suspect any mold issues.

Sounds good. so 60% humidity is ideal and what about temp? Would 72F be good and is it best to have a steady temperature during hang time? Thanks all.

I found living in a warm dry climate it was difficult to dry my harvest. As I have a closet grow I also have another closet for drying. I used to always harvest my buds a branch at a time. I'd take the ones ready and hope the remainder would swell more and finish out better. I was always struggling with my herbs drying too quick and blowing out the aroma and flavor to some degree. So the last harvest I took my girls which were about a meter tall and dried them whole and I was amazed at how much slower the plant dried. Then once dried and jarred the aroma and taste was exactly what I was looking for.

I guess because the humidity is so low here that even with a small humidifier in the closet and a slow fan circulating the air I still had my buds dry too fast. Once I hung the whole plant in the same identical setup as all my previous grows I got the slow even dry I was wanting. I did trim the fan leaves but left much more leaf on the buds than before, opting to final trim after drying and before jarring the crop.

If you've had trouble with drying too fast, try taking the plant whole and see if you don't have better luck.

72 works if you keep it moist enough, my best drying has been in the mid to upper 60's but I have little humidity here.

It doesn't make a difference whether you hang the whole plant attached or each individual bud cut off the stem, or anywhere in between those 2 extremes. It really doesn't matter as long as it takes the same amount of time to dry out.

whole plant, branches, individual nugs on screens. Bunch of ways to dry.

If you're drying in a humid place, I'd def get rid of fan leaves and dry as individual sticks, or smaller. Wouldn't want to lose the whole plant to mold.

I like to harvest my top half of colas first and let the other remainding smaller ones mature for another week.. I like doing this because I can transition from my initial wet trim to a dry trim and back to another wet trim and dry trim, etc. A lot easier then harvesting 6 fully mature outdoor plants all at once since you don't have to sit down and straight trim up 6 plants in one sitting cause your worried about losing thc, insects, mold, etc. from leaving the buds in a tubberware and not hung up to dry properly.