Growing Cannabis
Drying & Curing Cannabis: Your How-To Guide
All summer you cared for your cannabis plants. Throughout early fall you fretted over their well-being, hoping the rains and cooler temperatures wouldn’t destroy them. Now your window of peak ripeness has arrived, and you’ve finally snipped those glorious branches down.
It’s harvest time.
So, what comes next? You’ve harvested at the proper time, to be sure. But it’s your next steps in drying and curing that will make the difference between a just-okay product – and fine cannabis you’ll be proud to share with friends and family.
Here’s your guide for learning how to dry and cure cannabis like a pro:
Harvest Time in Your Cannabis Garden
Fall is upon us. The nights are waning longer and the days shorter. Temperatures cooling, rains beginning: Nature’s heads-up that it’s nearly harvest time for your cannabis garden.
Cannabis plants respond to photoperiod – the relationship between the duration of days and uninterrupted nights. It’s the length of dark of night that gives cannabis plants the signal to start flowering. Cannabis flowering occurs in the late summer and fall, when the dark of night increases to at least 10-12 hours. In Canada, cannabis plants generally begin to flower in mid-August and continue into October.
As you prepare to harvest your cannabis garden, here are some tips:
GARDEN BY THE MOON
So long as there has been agriculture, lunar planting has existed. Gardening by the moon follows the natural rhythms of nature. There’s an inhale and exhale. Wax on and wax off. For millennia this process has been trusted without question, until recently.
Gardening by the phases of the moon is now considered knowledge of the “old ways”. In modern agriculture, the moon’s influence is a factor that is mostly ignored and commonly thought of as superstition. But the science is clear. Whether growing cannabis or other crops, if you want a vigorous garden that stands out above the rest, follow the rules of lunar planting.
Read on to learn the basics of gardening by the moon.
HOW TO MAKE COMPOST TEA
You may have heard of compost tea. It’s not a tea you drink – rather, an organic plant food you can make at home and use as the sole source of fertilizer throughout the life of your garden. Brewing compost tea is a millennia-old practice dating back as far as ancient Roman times. The goal of brewing a backyard compost tea solution is to extract beneficial microbes from your compost and multiply them in a 24- to 36-hour fermentation process. The solution will enhance soil biology and improve plant vigour.
Although it may seem like an intimidating project, creating a compost tea brewing station is simple and inexpensive. The Romans did it and so can you. Just follow these easy steps.
TIPS FOR GROWING IN A SMALL SPACE
Cannabis is a joy to grow at home. In Canada we are fortunate to be able to grow four plants per household legally. However, not everyone has adequate outdoor space suitable for growing cannabis. For some of us, growing in a small indoor space is the only option. Thankfully, with a little know-how, small-space growing can yield big returns. Follow these steps to success – and enjoy!
