Marijuana Business Magazine - March 2018

for an exceptionally long time without destroying or damaging the terpene profile.” Peters believes a good guideline for drying is to keep the humidity at 60%-65% and the room temperature at 60-65 degrees. But be careful not to dry your plants too quickly or to overdry them because that can damage or destroy the terpene profiles, Peters said. He’s done that and tried to remedy the mistake by adding humidity to the air.The fluctuation of going from wet to dry to wet, however, is bad for the plant. “If you get that humidity wrong, it changes everything,” Peters said. He learned that by making the mistake of overdrying the plants – and then throw- ing water on the floor to raise both the humidity level as well as the moisture level in the plants. “You ended with all this good-looking weed but no smell, and its flavor was flat. If you fluctuate like that, you really start destroying the terpenes,” Peters said. Instruments are available that meas- ure plants’ moisture levels and water activity. But most veteran growers have enough experience that they can eyeball their plants and tell when they are ready. One favorite physical cue, however, is the stem snap. Peters breaks down his plants into branches that he puts in 20- and 30-gal- lon bins. He’ll take one of the stems at the thick part and bend or snap it. “There’s a specific time when there’s enough rigidity to the stem where it doesn’t snap but it doesn’t bend like it’s wet – and its dry enough on the outside that it’s not crumbling and all the tri- chomes are falling off,” Peters said. “It’s also not as sticky as it was, so you’re not going to destroy it with your scissors.” Buffkin prefers to dry his plants whole. He aims for about 12% moisture level and said it takes about 10 days to reach that. But he declined to say what temperature and humidity levels he uses to achieve that moisture level. Corey Buffkin is a partner and chief cultivator at Green Man Cannabis in Colorado. Field Trim or Not Another debate among growers is whether to start trimming plants in the field or after harvest. Peters chooses whether to field trim based on the strain and financial con- siderations. If growing plants that are destined for extraction or being made into resin, then Peters will field trim – but only the big fan leaves; the smaller leaves are bad for extract quality. If the plant is meant to be sold as flower, then Peters waits to trim off the fan leaves at the drying process. “If it doesn’t go to extracts, then it doesn’t matter if we get a fan leaf here and there.We’ll do the separation at the trimming table, and it’s just more cost effective,” Peters said. He noted that he starts cutting fan leaves about four or five weeks into the plants’ growing cycle, which usually take eight to 13 weeks. Some strains have a small number of very large fan leaves that are easy to trim. Others have many fan leaves that are small, making them hard to trim.Those plants with a small number of large fan leaves that are easily removed are what Peters prefers to field trim and send for extraction.Those strains include Hazy Girl, Maui Bubble Gift and Pineapple Kush. Hard-to-trim plants include Sensi Star and Strawberry Cough. For example, a Maui Bubble Gift plant may have about 20 large fan leaves that are about twice the size of a human hand. Sensi Star plants, by contrast, have about 120 fan leaves that are about half the size of a human palm, making for a more time-consuming trim job. The result: Trimming a pound of Maui Bubble Gift can take about two hours while trimming a pound of Sensi Star can take closer to eight hours. Trimming tables with kief screens at Eco Firma Farms. The screens catch and save the kief during the trimming process. Photo courtesy of Eco Firma Farms 88 • Marijuana Business Magazine • March 2018