Harvest & Curing Washing Buds!

[PapaEmeritus]

Hola, friendos!

I'm getting closer and closer to chop day of my first harvest, and I've been taking some time to hash out (get it? hash out! ha!) my plan for how I want to go about the whole thing and I figured I'd pop in and see what others thought about one of the more controversial techniques I plan to employ - washing buds before setting them to dry.

Has anyone else tried this? Does anyone else do it as a matter of course when harvesting your plants? At first I was super skeptical, but after watching a few youtube weed growers I trust employ the technique I gotta say I'm convinced of it's usefulness and plan to add it to my process. Even in the cleanest grow space there's a lot of stuff that we don't want on our buds (hair, dust, mold spores, etc) and to me washing seems like an easy way to mitigate some of those potential contaminants.

The way I've seen it done and the way I plan on doing it involves three 5-gallon buckets. Bucket [HASHTAG]#1[/HASHTAG] contains about 4 gallons of water, and one cup each of lemon juice and baking soda and the other two buckets are plain water rinses. Chop your plant, trim up a branch, then dunk & swish in bucket [HASHTAG]#1[/HASHTAG] and allow most of the water to drain. Repeat the dunk & swish with buckets two & three, then hang to dry as usual.

What do y'all think?

 

[namvet25]

Never heard of this.You could lose trychomes that way but it's up to youi but personally I wouldn't do it.

 

[Another One Bites the Dust1]

Hola, friendos!

I'm getting closer and closer to chop day of my first harvest, and I've been taking some time to hash out (get it? hash out! ha!) my plan for how I want to go about the whole thing and I figured I'd pop in and see what others thought about one of the more controversial techniques I plan to employ - washing buds before setting them to dry.

Has anyone else tried this? Does anyone else do it as a matter of course when harvesting your plants? At first I was super skeptical, but after watching a few youtube weed growers I trust employ the technique I gotta say I'm convinced of it's usefulness and plan to add it to my process. Even in the cleanest grow space there's a lot of stuff that we don't want on our buds (hair, dust, mold spores, etc) and to me washing seems like an easy way to mitigate some of those potential contaminants.

The way I've seen it done and the way I plan on doing it involves three 5-gallon buckets. Bucket [HASHTAG]#1[/HASHTAG] contains about 4 gallons of water, and one cup each of lemon juice and baking soda and the other two buckets are plain water rinses. Chop your plant, trim up a branch, then dunk & swish in bucket [HASHTAG]#1[/HASHTAG] and allow most of the water to drain. Repeat the dunk & swish with buckets two & three, then hang to dry as usual.

What do y'all think?

A couple of years ago I had a real battle with my indoor photos, and had to spray them several times with neem oil. I consulted someone on here that I trust his knowledge and experience, and a top notch grower. He told me he uses this method with every harvest. Anyway, I have washed my buds several times using this exact method. I would say for you to wash all buta couple of buds from each strain, and see if there is any potency loss with the washed buds.

Peace

 

[PapaEmeritus]

Never heard of this.You could lose trychomes that way but it's up to youi but personally I wouldn't do it.

So, that is a legit question/concern that comes up on discussions I've seen about this technique and it's definitely something I worried about as well, but there were a few things that got me past that worry. First was that trichomes aren't water soluble. That's the whole reason that we can do things like water curing and why we can't just make water tincs. Second was seeing that people like Jorge Cervantes advocate washing buds post-harvest in situations where you have a plant with powdery mildew. If he's comfortable not only dunking a plant in a tub of water but also spraying it down with a garden hose, there must not be much risk of damage to the bud itself.

Also, there's a user on Youtube by the name of Massachusetts Medical Marijuana Man who advocates the method, and has had his bud independently tested post-wash and found that it was still quite potent. Here's one of his videos explaining the process, as well as link to the testing results if you're interested:

 

[PapaEmeritus]

A couple of years ago I had a real battle with my indoor photos, and had to spray them several times with neem oil. I consulted someone on here that I trust his knowledge and experience, and a top notch grower. He told me he uses this method with every harvest. Anyway, I have washed my buds several times using this exact method. I would say for you to wash all buta couple of buds from each strain, and see if there is any potency loss with the washed buds.

Interesting! How was your result? And that's not a bad idea - there's a few smaller buds that I suppose I could reserve as a "control group" if I wanted to try to gauge the difference between the two.

 

[PapaEmeritus]

Here's the video of Jorge Cervantes washing to remove PM:

 

[Another One Bites the Dust1]

Interesting! How was your result? And that's not a bad idea - there's a few smaller buds that I suppose I could reserve as a "control group" if I wanted to try to gauge the difference between the two.

I nor any one else could tell a difference in a couple of strains that came from photo mother plants,in which were grown and partaken of before. Great idea on making a control group. Please let us know your 'results', as I for one vote for you to wash.

Peace.

 

[PapaEmeritus]

I nor any one else could tell a difference in a couple of strains that came from photo mother plants,in which were grown and partaken of before. Great idea on making a control group. Please let us know your 'results', as I for one vote for you to wash.

Good deal. I'm still a week or two away from chopping, but I most definitely will document the process and results once the buds are ready. Hope this thread takes off a bit in the meantime - very interested to see if any others have had similar experiences to yours.

 

[reworgotuA]

Hey there @ANTiFA , looks like i'm a little late but better late than never.
I just wanted to stop by and give a suggestion that i had recently seen about this exact technique, I do want to remind you that I am in no way experienced with this nor have i even tried it. But I recently came across a posting ( I think it was on instagram) of someone washing/rinsing their harvest, I noticed a lot of comments asking about trichome loss while rinsing and I was wondering the exact same thing. Well apparently ( i never even thought about it) the person in the video would pre-fill the buckets with water and let them sit in the sun for a while so the water was warm (he said room temp to luke warm) when he rinsed, that way the resin glands don't freeze up and shatter off. The person supported this method very much and also used it with every harvest. but he used the large 55 gallon barrels because they would rinse the whole plant before trimming, I believe he recommended just baking soda in the first bath if you didn't want the lemon affecting the flavor. But he had two other barrels to rinse off the 'bath" water so the lemon may not even have an effect.
Anyway I just wanted to stop by and drop off this little piece of info, and again, I have never tried this method before. Hope all goes well, wishing you bountiful harvests!!:smoking:

 

[iWumbo]

On YouTube there is a video of a guy who tested his bud before washing and after and the washed buds were higher in thc. :smiley1: