Welcome to Part 3 of our 4-part Croptober series. In Part 2, Tyler explained how to properly dry your cannabis crop, and now in Part 3, he'll lay out the best practices for curing the flowers. 

Curing is the post drying process where you break down the plants, trim up the buds and place them into brown paper bags and then glass jars.  After the buds have been trimmed up they may still be a little bit too wet to put into a glass jar.  This is where the brown paper bags come in handy. You can place the buds into the brown paper bag and roll the top up and put a paper clip or a binder clip on the top of it to keep it from opening. Staples also will work and so will tape if that is all you have. But you will want to open and close it periodically to test the flower density and moisture content. 

Glass jars also allow you to easily regulate the air inside the container by opening and closing the lids relatively easily.  

A 1-gallon glass jar will generally hold about 175-250 grams of dried and trimmed buds (depending on the flower structure and how they are broken down of course). Once you get the buds to the right moisture content, not too dry, not too wet.  Then you can place them in the glass jars.  

Let the buds sit overnight in the jars and then crack them open 24 hours later. Let the jar sit out for a minute and if possible place a small fan on low speed a few feet away from the jars and have it blow over them to exchange the air in the jar with the atmosphere. Close the jar back up and check the buds 24 hours later to see if the jar needs to be “burped” again. The goal here is to get the moisture content to even out between all the different buds in the jar. 

Depending on how dry or wet the material is, it should take about 3-5 days of repeating the burping process before the buds get to the right moisture content. Let the jars sit in a cool, dark environment for 2-4 weeks before opening the jar again. Keep an eye out for mold and mildew growth and remove those jars and put them in your compost bin. Letting the buds age or cure really helps create a superior product compared to freshly dried and bagged flowers.

In the final part of our Croptober series, we'll look at best practices for long-term storage of your cannabis crop. 

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