Water Cure, The Members' Thread

[George Parker]

Hello!

I'd like to share my recent experience with Water Curing and invite those of you who are interested or have done this type of cure, to share your experiences as well. I named this "The Members' Thread" because I would like it to be written by all of us. If you are reading this and not yet a member of this site... what are you waiting for? . Welcome to !

If we can please keep this as a sharing and questions/answers/suggestions type thread, that would be great. I understand that many growers cringe at the thought of submerging good buds in water or removing/altering the taste of your favorite medicines, but Water Curing has it's place as yet another tool in the grow shed. We'll save the debates for another thread.

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Water curing basically uses osmosis to leach out the nutrients, chlorophyll, pesticides, and even mold and mlildew from your cuttings.

For those of you that followed my first grow, you have seen this in my journal. But for those of you who haven't, this is how it went...

Approximately 5 weeks into flower my plants got a bad case of powdery milew and after many failed attempts to control it I had to make a choice to either harvest early or loose the crop.

BlueDog offered up some great advice to me...

Are you familiar with water cures? Woodsman and I have both had to do it and if the pm isn't bad you'll be able to salvage your crop.

The downside to a water cure is that you're going to lose most of the taste and smell, it's still there but quite faint. The upside is your crop will be fully cured and dried withing 10 days.

You cut all the buds off the stems and put them in mason jars. Fill the jar almost all the way to the top, and on the first day add about 10% h2o2.

The buds must be fully underwater, not floating at the surface. Woodsman just carefully filled the jars and sealed them. I created screens out of plastic lids for coffee cans, cut them to shape and drilled a bunch of small holes in them. I thought it would be better if some air was exchanged, but it worked both ways.

Distilled water is best because it's pure, and you're going to leach all the impurities and chlorophyll out of the buds.

Leave the jars in the dark at room temp for about a day, dump out the water and repeat the process. At the start the water will be very nasty. Woodsman only used h2o2 on the first day, I never used it.

You keep doing this until the water is clear, usually 6-10 days. After that the buds are cured and the mold is gone.

As I'm sure you know, thc is not water soluble and will not be harmed. In fact the high is more intense because so much of the plant matter is leached out, your 'yield' will be 10-20% lower in weight but not in trichs. I'd highly suggest this even if you plan on just making hash, because in the back of your mind you'll always be wondering if you're smoking spores and you might well be.

Much respect to you Blue! I say a thank you each each day as I light up the Water Cured meds I now have.

I chopped the girls and placed them into mason jars...

Then I filled them with RO water. Distilled water is probably better as it is more pure than RO, but I had 20 gallons of RO on hand so that is what I used. Made sure to use ROOM TEMP WATER as too cold will cause the trichs to fall off (Think Bubble Hash Making).

After 24hrs the water looked like this

After six days of daily water changes the buds and trim were ready for drying

I placed the wet buds into a food dehydrator but it was too hot and I worried about cooking the THC off the meds so I let them air dry for ~24hrs in the dark. Room temps were between 70 and 80F. RH was 16-20%.

Ended up with some strong smoking, clean burning, smooth tasting meds. You can see the full write up and the daily changes in my journal P-91 - CFL 12Pack - SCROG - DWC 1st Grow but for the sake of time I tried to share the key moments.

A big thanks again to BlueDog for sharing this method with me and a big thanks to stevehman for the encouragement for me to share my experience.

I hope that if you have any questions or want to share your WC experience, to do so here, freely. Thanks for following and I look forward to your posts.

-dime

 

[Muggles13]

I'll put my 2 cents worth in with a mini water cure I started today. I've been fighting the PM for a couple weeks on my Papaya (Patty) with high PH distilled water in a mist sprayer. This seems to control it, but not kill it. We're at day 52 of flower so I don't want to use chemicals or a burner.

I removed a few of the more infected lower buds for this test. I'll follow dime's lead and try to update daily.

Day 1 Wednesday 10:00 am

24.1 grams fresh cut.

Into the jar and filled with distilled water, up PH'd to 10.1 for the first 24 hours only. Normal distilled starting tomorrow and to the end.

I'm thinking maybe around a 1/4 oz dry. Time will tell.

 

[George Parker]

Thanks for sharing that Muggles. Looking forward to following your WC and you know I'll be there for the rest of your grow

Thank you!

 

[Muggles13]

24 hours after starting water cure. Drain off the old water, refilled and let sit for 5 minute, drained again to remove excess of the high PH water and refilled for the next 24 hour soak. the water in the glass is from the first soaking.

 

[George Parker]

Looking good Mugs.

Thanks again for sharing, I hope we can get some more folks on board to share as well.

 

[Muggles13]

Looking good Mugs.

Thanks again for sharing, I hope we can get some more folks on board to share as well.

My pleasure, glad to be able to give something back

 

[Muggles13]

With respects to BlueDog, I'm moving this in here for the numbers. I'm going to guess that after drying the water cure, that it would be a good idea to try and keep the buds between 55-60% RH also.
Any opinions, ideas or wild guesses are welcome.

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Re: What is the best way to dry and preserve the cure for smooth, sweet buds?

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This has been floating around the grows and I'm not sure who to credit for it but I found it to be extremely helpful, especially as a newbie going through it the first time . More to the point it worked great!

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It's a very simple and effective process:

Cut the product, trim it per your preference, but don't dry it until the stems snap. Take it down while the stems still have some flex, but the product feel dry on the outside. This is a perfect opportunity to drop the dry-feeling flowers onto a screen and collect prime-quality kief that would otherwise get lost in the jar.

Jar the product, along with a Caliber III hygrometer. One can be had on Ebay for ~$20. Having tested a number of hygrometers - digital and analog - this model in particular produced consistent, accurate results. Then, watch the readings:

+70% RH - too wet, needs to sit outside the jar to dry for 12-24 hours, depending.

65-70% RH - the product is almost in the cure zone, if you will. It can be slowly brought to optimum RH by opening the lid for 2-4 hours.

60-65% RH - the stems snap, the product feels a bit sticky, and it is curing.

55-60% RH - at this point it can be stored for an extended period (3 months or more) without worrying about mold. The product will continue to cure.

Below 55% RH - the RH is too low for the curing process to take place. The product starts to feel brittle. Once you've hit this point, nothing will make it better. Adding moisture won't restart the curing process; it will just make the product wet. If you measure a RH below 55% don't panic. Read below:

Obviously, the product need time to sweat in the jar. As such, accurate readings won't be seen for ~24 hours, assuming the flowers are in the optimal cure zone. If you're curing the product for long-term storage, give the flowers 4-5 days for an accurate reading. If the product is sill very wet, a +70% RH reading will show within hours. If you see the RH rising ~1% per hour, keep a close eye on the product, as it's likely too moist.

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As I said I'm a newbie, I found it extremely hard to figure out if I was doing the cure right, this takes out the guess work.

After I got the hygrometers I tested some stash that had been sitting in jars (luckily in the cold) for months, I thought it was doing great. The rh was over 70%. If it had been warmer that stuff would have been lost to mold.

A cautionary note, I tried using normal cheapo temp/humidity gauges, they don't read correctly in small enclosed spaces I guess, the rh readings were off by more than 20%. Don't be penny wise and pound foolish, get a Cal III. Get several. I like to have one for each 4 jars so I can keep a close eye on things. You need to leave them in there 24 hours later in the cure to get good readings.

 

[shaggie-420]

good link
wonder how this would do on a large scale crop (like the one that we turned in to hash at the start of winter 110 plants)
we salved more than half but it was still devastating.

 

[George Parker]

good link
wonder how this would do on a large scale crop (like the one that we turned in to hash at the start of winter 110 plants)
we salved more than half but it was still devastating.

Glad to have you here

Sorry to hear you lost some of that crop but glad you got something out of it. I don't see why you couldn't do this on a large scale, given you have enough Distilled or RO on hand. I would think some large containers with some drains would be pretty much the same the thing... Just much bigger .

Thanks for stopping in.

 

[Hydrologist]

Wow Dime, I gatta hand it to you buddy !!!!

short, concise and straight to the point! Just how us ADHD kids like it! MAN I tottallly wish I knew about this technique when I first started growing Cannabis in soil exactly a year ago. I grew these weird ass Sativa Dominant girls and I didn't know a damn thing about growing I didn't transplant or anything had them in soil indoors it was...wack. But yeah man I ended up getting a pretty bad mite infestation then came the powdery mildew. The Indica dominant Kush strains I grew never got the mold but the sativa's did evertime I sware to god. Sucked so much. Some strains are just wack like that where if something isn't perfect for it it shits all over your hard work by offering you wack moldy buds. But you can't cut and run to the next strain too quick. Because if its because your doing something elementary wrong you'll just keep getn' it no matter what strain your growing.
But yeah instead I just ended up smoking wack spore herb. Though I was able to trim most of it off but damn did that ever suck!!!! Then I stopped growing for like 6 months then started back up again when I moved in with Heks and started back up with Hydroponics and havn't looked back since!
Thank GEEOD!
haha take it easy dude stay up!

((((HYDROLOGIST))))

 

[Muggles13]

Day 3 Water cure, and it still about the same color wash water coming off.

 

[Barry Manilow]

Hey dime great thread!

If I'd have known I was quoted I'd have stopped by sooner lol.

I first looked into this because I had a lot of mold in my first grow, there's an older thread on this that I read.

As usual you get lots of conflicting info, I would NOT use ice water as the one guy does, nor would I use tap water. Distilled, RO or clean rain water would be my choices since you want the water as pure as possible to leach out the nasty shit.

Water cure your plants

good link
wonder how this would do on a large scale crop (like the one that we turned in to hash at the start of winter 110 plants)
we salved more than half but it was still devastating.

This would work fine for a large crop, the only constraints would be large containers and lots of water. The one guy in the thread I posted was curing in a big cooler. I imagine you could use something like a baby pool... in that case I'd probably just turn the hose loose on it, I'm not buying a few hundred gallons of water!

Day 3 Water cure, and it still about the same color wash water coming off.

I think your water has looked relatively clean, how are your temps? For this procedure I think warmer (not hot) is better, it will speed up the leaching. I had to do a small WC over the winter, it was quite cool and it took forever.

Just to be clear, I completely agree with dime. This is not the preferred way to cure, but it can save your crop if it's moldy or overnuted. I've read that it will make edibles taste less 'weedy'. I have no experience with that yet but it certainly makes sense.

And if you need to be stealthy this is great too. Ever come back to your car on hot day and a small bud you had under the seat or wherever has stunk it up? That won't happen with a WC'd bud. Sometimes less stank is better.

 

[Muggles13]

Hey dime great thread!

If I'd have known I was quoted I'd have stopped by sooner lol.

I first looked into this because I had a lot of mold in my first grow, there's an older thread on this that I read.

As usual you get lots of conflicting info, I would NOT use ice water as the one guy does, nor would I use tap water. Distilled, RO or clean rain water would be my choices since you want the water as pure as possible to leach out the nasty shit.





This would work fine for a large crop, the only constraints would be large containers and lots of water. The one guy in the thread I posted was curing in a big cooler. I imagine you could use something like a baby pool... in that case I'd probably just turn the hose loose on it, I'm not buying a few hundred gallons of water!



I think your water has looked relatively clean, how are your temps? For this procedure I think warmer (not hot) is better, it will speed up the leaching. I had to do a small WC over the winter, it was quite cool and it took forever.

Just to be clear, I completely agree with dime. This is not the preferred way to cure, but it can save your crop if it's moldy or overnuted. I've read that it will make edibles taste less 'weedy'. I have no experience with that yet but it certainly makes sense.

And if you need to be stealthy this is great too. Ever come back to your car on hot day and a small bud you had under the seat or wherever has stunk it up? That won't happen with a WC'd bud. Sometimes less stank is better.

Everything is at room temp. Water going in is probably 66-68, the jar sits in a kitchen cabinet, 65 at night, 78 day. Its possible with all the misting I've been doing, airborne contaminates and dust have been wash away already.

 

[Barry Manilow]

Everything is at room temp. Water going in is probably 66-68, the jar sits in a kitchen cabinet, 65 at night, 78 day. Its possible with all the misting I've been doing, airborne contaminates and dust have been wash away already.

That makes sense my friend. Those temps should be perfect.

Also my reference is my summer outdoor grow that I had to constantly spray for bugs, birds shit on them, and who knows what else. That water was incredibly nasty for 2-3 days.... really dark brown almost black, bubbly, it looked like fermenting dark beer. Unfortunately I didn't think to take pics.

 

[Box of Rain]

Hey Dirt AND Blue Dog-Excellent ideas- I'm week 3 into flowering with some ill Purple Urkle girls-I think that I will use this method for my first cure-Don't think it will be a big one- Grow #2 is Diamond og grown from seeds that I got from a collective with my bud (BONUS!!) Dirt I promise I will send pics when I can get my head out of my ass to figure out how to send pics!! still don't have enough posts for private messages yet- unless ANYBODY wants to donate points-Ha-Ha-Hope all is well with ALL you GREAT people who help ALL of us out ESPECIALLY 420 magazine!!!!!!!!!
"One Man Gathers What Another Man Spills"

 

[George Parker]

Blue, I'm really glad you're here man... Wouldn't be the same here without the person I learned this from.

Thanks for sharing so much with all of us, a lot of us are better growers than when we started because of your help. Well!... Now we just need a "Member Of The Year" contest to go along with Nug and Plant, I'd be honored to nominate you

 

[Box of Rain]

Hey dirt- Sorry I must b STONED I thought you only had one page to this new thread -so I replied at the end of pagwe one--

 

[George Parker]

Hey Dirt AND Blue Dog-Excellent ideas- I'm week 3 into flowering with some ill Purple Urkle girls-I think that I will use this method for my first cure-Don't think it will be a big one- Grow #2 is Diamond og grown from seeds that I got from a collective with my bud (BONUS!!) Dirt I promise I will send pics when I can get my head out of my ass to figure out how to send pics!! Give me your e-mail address- I'll send it that way- still don't have enough posts for private messages yet- unless ANYBODY wants to donate points-Ha-Ha-Hope all is well with ALL you GREAT people who help ALL of us out ESPECIALLY 420 magazine!!!!!!!!!
"One Man Gathers What Another Man Spills"

Hey BoR, glad you stopped by! I hope you post up your water cure here, I'm sure we would all like to see it

Have you thought about starting a grow journal? I could, or Im sure one of us could help you get the pics posted too. If you haven't seen this Photo Gallery Guide - How to Resize, Upload & Post Photos Click on that link . Just follow the part at the beginning to upload the pics, then when you are posting just click the little camera icon above and to the right of the text box you are typing in, and a window will pop up with the uploaded pics, click on the pic/s you want to post and you're rockin' and rollin'! Plus that way more people can see what you have going on and can cheer you on or be there to offer help
if you need it.

Talk with you soon.

-dime

 

[Muggles13]

Day 4.
Looks like a little less coloring but still cloudy. Before I drained to the glass, I could see swirls of denser matter in the jar. I also forgot to mention that the jar is sealed tight, but I open it a couple time during the day.

Its about 8 oz. of water in with not that much bud, so water to solid ratio is fairly high, so the darker color could just be diluted.

 

[Barry Manilow]

Blue, I'm really glad you're here man... Wouldn't be the same here without the person I learned this from.

Thanks for sharing so much with all of us, a lot of us are better growers than when we started because of your help. Well!... Now we just need a "Member Of The Year" contest to go along with Nug and Plant, I'd be honored to nominate you

Hey dime you're way too kind but thank you I'd have to withdraw and nominate OMM, he should be in the 420 Hall of Fame if they had one.

I'm glad to share what few things I do know, and I seem to learn something new every day. We've got a great group of people here that are happy to support each other, and I think we're all getting better at what we're trying to do. Take care my friend

Day 4.
Looks like a little less coloring but still cloudy. Before I drained to the glass, I could see swirls of denser matter in the jar. I also forgot to mention that the jar is sealed tight, but I open it a couple time during the day.

Its about 8 oz. of water in with not that much bud, so water to solid ratio is fairly high, so the darker color could just be diluted.

Looking good bro! I have a hard time telling but do you think the buds are getting darker? Few more days and you'll be done