8. From Weed to Widget
Be ready to revise any system, scrap any method, abandon any theory, if the success of the job requires it.
One of the many advantages of indoor growing is that not only do you have a better ability to govern the consistency of the growing medium and environment, but it also enables you to generate consistent cash flow with weekly harvests. This gives a business, at least in theory, a much better ability to forecast production and inventory.
By contrast, in an outdoor garden you might only get one or two harvests a year that are greatly affected by many different variables including the ambient environment and seasonal weather, making it difficult to predict and budget for the inventory you will have for sale.
On the other hand, in the Successional Weekly Harvesting model, you know that you’re almost always going to be able to count on a weekly harvest that should usually fall within certain yield perimeters that can be ascertained through an examination of your data history.
With this format, it is much easier to model your business plan, cost per square inch, workflow analysis, etc.
Or as Troy put it, “this is as close to a widget as you can get when you’re growing pot.”
To be clear though, weed is definitely not a widget, even in a controlled indoor environment, it’s still an agricultural product that requires a high input of high touch, hands-on labor, in order to be successfully produced in a consistent cycle.
Harvesting every week is not something that can be automated, nor is the other end of the operation, in which you’re cutting a set of clones each week, while uprooting and transplanting another.
This kind of sounds like an assembly line?
The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
Everything would work just fine, if it wasn’t for those pesky humans! If you had robots and drones running your indoor garden, then this would work great, all the time!
The biggest stress points in this business are all about labor. If you don’t have redundant workflow, and someone takes a week off at the same time as someone else on your crew gets sick, then something is going to have to be sacrificed.
You can only manage to do so much with a crew of 6, if three of them are missing, and you need 6 people to get the job done right. Are your employees willing to make up for lost time on weekends?
Even though people might get burnt out or tired, the plants never take a day off! For instance, if you don’t stay on top of defoliating your plants, you’re unlikely to hit your production forecast, as growth will be limited if there is not enough light penetration to the flower producing parts of the plant. Additionally, without removing these leaves, you’re not giving the plants enough airflow which leaves them susceptible to develop pathogens and then become a vector for the spread of molds, fungi, pests, and other contaminants.
Harvest Considerations
Because I'm still in love with you, I want to see you dance again. Because I'm still in love with you, on this harvest moon.
One of the most important factors in trichome and terpene retention is the harvest window and time of harvest. For trichomes, this means you will need to be able to identify their readiness, which is a visibly milky white state, at the cusp of ‘ambering’ or degrading.
While an experienced cultivator may be able to tell with just their naked eye in the sunlight, it’s best to use a magnifying glass or jewelers loupe to examine the trichomes in greater detail.
The terpenes do not stay fixed or stationary in the cannabis plant but are constantly moving up and down the plant at different times of day. In the early morning before the sun comes out, the terpenes are moving up the stem of the plant and into the cannabis flowers.
When the sun comes up however, the terpenes begin to retreat and sink back down into the stem.
This means that if you cut your plants in the late afternoon, especially if it’s hot and sunny out, then you are most likely going to lose most of your terpenes to bad timing!
Harvest
But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days.
When some people think of the cannabis industry, they imagine a group of lazy stoners, sitting around a backroom table, taking dabs. When we think of the fall outdoor cannabis harvest, the only apt comparison that comes to mind is Francis Ford Coppola’s, Apocalypse Now.
You need to have a good plan going in. And you need to be prepared for what you’re getting yourself into.
Harvesting two or three outdoor plants, or fifty indoor plants, can be a lot of work. Comparatively, harvesting two or three thousand full-term outdoor plants, especially with a small crew, is pretty much, well… a suicide mission!
Hanging vs. Dry Racks?
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
While some may prefer drying in racks, believing it allows you to control the conditions better, in our experience, it wasn’t as practical on a large scale or a short timeline as hang drying. What worked best for us was cutting up large sections of the plant and then hanging them horizontally on trellis rope lines and vertically on long strips of scrog netting.
If indoors and/or constrained by space and time, breaking plants down to individual branches can facilitate the process. When breaking down the plant be sure to leave a hook at the end where the node junction occurs on the stem. This will make hanging and drying much easier. The danger in hanging individual branches is that it will now dry much more quickly, so stay diligent with your daily moisture readings.
To dry in our 48’ by 96’ foot hoop houses, we had to cover the entire structure with a heavy tarp, so light couldn’t penetrate.
It’s important when hanging plant sections to allow enough spacing for adequate airflow. You ideally want to keep the air moving with fans or an HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system.
Your biggest enemy at this time is mold, so do your best to harvest completely dry plants. It seems obvious, but if doing a dawn harvest to maintain terps, as discussed earlier, there may be dew on your plants. To avoid a terrible morning in a day or two be sure to have the harvest team shake the cut plants off OUTSIDE of the drying space. This is easily accomplished prior to hanging, typically at a weighing station. These weighing stations are often required by your market’s traceability regulations.
Another extremely important safeguard you should take to protect your crops during drying is to use ‘step-pans’ or footbaths. These pans will help your crew avoid tracking contaminants like pests, molds, and other pathogens into the drying space. To accomplish this, many facilities will fill the pans with ‘safe’ disinfectants ranging from isopropyl alcohol to a product called Zerotol and place them at entry points to your drying space.
While it can be tempting, and sometimes unavoidable, due to space limitations, to hasten the drying process by cranking up the heat; there are several advantages to drying cold.
Though it will take longer than drying with supplemental heat, cold drying is preferable for two main reasons. Foremost, mold will basically stop growing below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, but is active at that temperature and above.
The other advantage of cold drying, is that it helps you retain all those desirable, volatile terpenes. Terps will vaporize off at room temperature, let alone when you turn up the heat! Though they’re much less sensitive than the terpenes, the cannabinoids, your THC and CBD, will also degrade when exposed to light and heat.
Drying and Curing
(Hoop house turning into a drying room in 2017, Quincy, WA.)
In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.
If by some miracle your best terpenes have made it through harvest, they will most likely be destroyed during drying and curing. While your cannabinoids are also at risk, the terpenes are far more delicate and volatile.
Given that terpenes are so sensitive to light and heat, the best you can do to prevent their loss is to use a dry, cool, and dark space for drying. It will take longer but it will be worth it.
Drying
Beauty is a fragile gift.
Whether you are drying for an indoor or an outdoor garden, the optimal conditions will be the same. Ideally you want an environment that is completely dark, dry, and cool, with great airflow and movement. How long you dry for, and how much space you need is entirely contingent on your process, your available space, and the speed at which you can pull moisture out of the air with fans and dehumidifiers. Fans and air exchange are key to getting the most out of dehumidification or desiccant systems.
Ideally in a perfect world you would cold dry with commercial dehumidifiers, as this is not only best practices for terpene retention as mentioned above, but also will also help you keep mold from growing and jumping from plant to plant.
That being said, this method will take longer, and you’ll need to lower the RH of your humidifier, as the water carrying capacity of cold air is lower than warm air. The more material you have crammed into a space the higher the moisture content of your ambient air will be.
That’s not always an option though, if you have limited space and time, and you need to turn around a dry batch of flowers, in that case you may want to use supplemental heat. If you’re forced to do that, and you’re drying hot, it’s more critical than ever to make sure you create adequate airflow for the drying plant material. Also make sure you’re checking you’re regularly using a moisture reader to make sure that you don’t overdry your flowers. A moisture content of 9-12% going into the curing process would be ideal.
To Destem or Not to Destem?
On the other hand, you have different fingers.
Some growers will keep the branches on for a few reasons. First of all, the branches aid in evapo-transpiration, which is a needlessly overcomplicated way of saying that there is a wicking of moisture from the flower to the stem that occurs, which can help accelerate the drying process. The downside of this though, is that the wet stems can also become a vector for mold that can spread to the flowers.
On the other hand, a lot of times it’s just a practical decision. Do you have enough room and enough racks to dry everything? If not, it may just be easier and more space effective to hang the cannabis branches on vertical rows of netting.
On a personal note, most growers call this process, ‘de-budding’ or ‘de-nugging’ but I changed the name for my crew to de-stemming, since the nug is the part we want to keep, and the stem is the part we want to get rid of. In my mind it’s just a small psychological, philosophic, or symbolic difference.
We’ve been there, done that, and ready to help you avoid the same mistakes.
Tell us more about your plan or business needs.
Curing
(A curing bucket from 2018, in Port Townsend, WA.)
I had a stick of CareFree gum, but it didn't work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I was back to pondering my mortality.
It’s now time to cut ties with your stems for good. If possible, you can cure in glass jars, but if not, a high grade, plastic brewer’s bucket, or something similar will also do the trick. Just make sure it’s a high quality plastic and that it won’t off-gas toxic chemicals onto your flowers. For example, you probably don’t want to use a plastic bin from Walmart.
Cold is definitely still the way to go when it comes to curing. Once again you can do everything right up until this point and then still ruin the product by over-drying the flowers, or not drying them enough, thereby exposing them to mold.
You need to find the right balance, to keep the flowers from getting crispy, while giving the bacteria and enzymes a chance to work and break down the chlorophyll, ligands, starches, sugars, and other undesirable plant material.
The first part of the curing process is called ‘burping’, which typically lasts between 1-2 weeks. Burping, like it sounds, means that you’re periodically opening your airtight containers to let out all of the gasses that have accumulated inside as a result of the decomposition of some of the plant chemicals during the curing process.
The trick is to stay vigilant in checking in on your containers, “rolling” or delicately rotating the flowers frequently, and adjusting exposure time to ambient conditions as needed, based on your flowers’ moisture level and chlorophyll content.
Make sure to plan in advance and to have ample space available for a burping and curing rotation. Don’t do it in the hallway or in another careless, fire code violating location which won’t give you enough room to adequately gently stir or roll your flowers and then allow each container to sit open for a short period of time.
When rolling the flowers, be careful not to allow the weight of the buds on the top, crush the flowers on the bottom, which can destroy their commercial, bag appeal. To save time, and minimize handling, ideally you can roll or stir the buds from inside of your cure containers.
Once the burping process is complete, the product moves into an opaque, airtight container, where its flavor profile can continue to improve for months, as it ages, like a fine wine. If curing and storing in large rigid body containers, you want to leave at least 25% of each container empty to ensure enough air exchange occurs inside and to avoid compressing the flowers at the bottom of the container.
If the flavor is too harsh and hurts your throat when you smoke a sample for evaluation, this means that the flowers still have too much undesirable material, such as chlorophyll, minerals, and sugars; and will need to continue in the cure process for longer.
Many times, growers will overlook the curing or try to shortcut the process in order to get their flowers out to market faster. In most cases, this will lead to inferior products, and while the flowers might cure eventually in their packaging, this would only be true if those items were sitting unsold, and unwanted for a long time.
Key Chapter Takeaways
The Do’s and Don’ts of the Dope Industry
- Do– Prune, clean and train the plant for optimal growth, health and production
- Do– Take the time to properly flush, dry and cure your cannabis
- Do– Consider turning your indoor production into an assembly-line type model
- Don’t– Forget to give your grow beds enough spacing to allow for full and healthy plants to grow
- Don’t– Allow excess moisture to pool or puddle on or around your plants
- Don’t– Cook the bejesus out of your terpenes!