What is RH, and Why Is It Important in Drying, Curing and Storing Bud?

[Irish]

Relative Humidity (RH), is the foundation on which Great Bud is built--it is the cornerstone of all that goes well with a grow, or the debacle that goes wrong with it.
But how can something so invisible and often unnoticeable have any bearing on one's Grow and Harvest at all?

Let's start with the basics.

It's water.

If it weren't for water, life on Earth would be nonexistent. It is one of the required elements for life to happen. All kinds of life. Relative Humidity, or rather the vaporized H20 that indicates Relative Humidity, amongst a great many other things, caters to the growth of microscopic organisms like bacteria, molds and fungi as well as being a catalyst for chemical reactions. How one manages the Relative Humidity of one's grow has a direct bearing on whether the plants get pests, mildew, bud rot, or any number of maladies associated with too much or too little water in the air. How one manages the Relative Humidity of the drying and curing areas has a direct bearing on the quality of the produce and the length of time it takes to dry or cure. If RH is too far out of range, even the simple step of drying can become a disturbing and complex event involving either over-dried bud or rotting ones.

A lot of us luck out in one way or another, oblivious of the invisible happenings in our gardens and in our buds. Good dries, good cures--just effortless. (That is because the conditions were ripe for such successes. The Relative Humidity and Temperatures were perfect or near perfect for such things to occur by default.)

But what happens when conditions are not optimum and problems rear their ugly heads? What do you do?

What do you do?

You have to get in control of things, is what you have to do.

And Fast.

When things start going awry in drying/curing or growing they can go fast, so you have to be a step ahead of the game. You have to have the reins of Relative Humidity firmly in the one hand and the leash of Temperature wrapped tightly around the other or you'll quickly get out of control with your harvest.

"But how does one do that, Irish?"

That's what I'm here to discuss.

 

[Flurple]

ive seen plenty of posts asking how to deal with this...

if i did have an issue i would consider ways to exchange the humid air with outside air or air from another room.

dehumidifiers work great if thats not an option.

raising the temp and increasing air circulation helps.

a bag of rice or dry clay work well as a dessicant.

 

[Irish]

ive seen plenty of posts asking how to deal with this...

if i did have an issue i would consider ways to exchange the humid air with outside air or air from another room.

dehumidifiers work great if thats not an option.

raising the temp and increasing air circulation helps.

a bag of rice or dry clay work well as a dessicant.

Me too. That's why I started this thread, so we can address some of the issues that can come up concerning drying, curiing and storing.

An exchange of air is good if the incoming air can affect the humidity. Of course, if you live down on the Gulf or any of the southern states, or its rainy weather, a simple change of air won't solve a high humidity problem. That's where your dehumidifier, or a heating/air conditioning unit, or even a woodstove would prove invaluable. A good dessicant, like what one would find for travel trailers or enclosed boats, would likely help as well. Unless you have a small harvest or a small space, I can't see where a bag of rice or clay would help overmuch, but I haven't tried it so can't speak empirically.

Raising the temp, even with added airflow, will not necessarily dry things out. The heat, with the added humidity, can accelerate decomposition, which in essence is what curing is about--the controlled breakdown of elements through chemical reaction within the bud. You want to be on the edge of decomposition without going fully into it--if you can smell ammonia, you're beginning to wreck your buds.

If one opts to go with heat to slow the process down, one must also make sure it is a dry heat that can eliminate moisture buildup and disperse ammonia vapors, effectively shutting down the curing process--at least for a while. Otherwise you risk speeding everything up, and you'll hate yourself in the morning. *LOL*

One thing that is a helpful tool is a hygrometer capable of not only calculating Relative Humidity, but temperature and dewpoint as well. It'll help you decide if your methods of drying or hydrating are working for you, and can warn you when you've gone out of the temp/humidity range you deem necessary for your cure. A dangerous place to be is where temperature and humidity get together to create dew--the "dewpoint"--a totally avoidable place if you pay attention to your hygrometer, but can happen when you least expect it on an unfortunate day without one.

But what do you do if you happen to crisp you buds to the point where they shatter into dust? This is just as bad as rotting, IMHO. It stops the entire curing process and locks in what's in the bud at the time--something truly undesirable in the early days of drying. At this point, one's dearest hope is that the stems and leaves within the buds still retain some moisture to kick-start the curing process again. To get that going, vacuum sealing in a zip lock freezer bag is beneficial. Don't suck out so much air that the buds get crushed, but take out enough that the bag tightly conforms to the contours of its contents.

And then watch.

If curing resumes, the baggie will begin to inflate. Let it. Don't open it until you can feel softness in the buds through the plastic. Once you can, you can go on with your prescribed curing procedure, but if it doesn't, and your buds are truly bone-dry, a more drastic measure will have to be employed.

 

[Flurple]

i would love to get a hygrometer.

i didnt even know they sold dessicants for boats and stuff thats great, and yes a bag of rice will only work for a tiny area.

i have been circulating the air cooling my lights into the rest of my house to heat it, but the strange thing is the humidity goes down 10% when i have more lights on. maybe this is from the humid air being carried away, cooling, and leaving moisture on its way back to the room?

also i have read if you over dry the buds you are curing you can add moisture using orange peels, a damp cloth, or sprinkle a few drops of water in the bag. you have to be careful not to make it mold but it works good.

 

[Irish]

i would love to get a hygrometer.

i didnt even know they sold dessicants for boats and stuff thats great, and yes a bag of rice will only work for a tiny area.

i have been circulating the air cooling my lights into the rest of my house to heat it, but the strange thing is the humidity goes down 10% when i have more lights on. maybe this is from the humid air being carried away, cooling, and leaving moisture on its way back to the room?

also i have read if you over dry the buds you are curing you can add moisture using orange peels, a damp cloth, or sprinkle a few drops of water in the bag. you have to be careful not to make it mold but it works good.

*head bobbing affirmatively* Ayup, moving the air around the house, when the rest of your house has a lower RH, will dump the humidity a bit in your grow room. But what if it were hot outside for instance, and you were using, say, a swamp cooler to cool the rest of the house, circulating wouldn't do any good. It may change the temp a bit, but the RH will still be what it is.

When you have 10, 20, 50 pounds of colas hanging and not drying, or worse yet, crisped to the core, it'll take more than circulation to get them drying, and waaaay more than orange peels, a damp cloth, or a few sprinkles of water to get them going right again.

One of my growers went through both of these scenarios this year. Because of the raid, we didn't dare set up his curing area here where I could manage it for him. He took home plant after plant, all cut up and ready to be trimmed and hung. He hired trimmers (no fear when you live in another county and LEO doesn't know you have a grow) and got everything hanging in a timely manner out in his garage. We've had some wet weather, and his garage was really high with humidity.

The buds weren't drying. They hung and hung and hung, wet and cold, until he began to worry about the "off" smell of his crop. Knee jerk reaction told him to bring out the space heater and jack up the heat. Didn't change the humidity any, but it sure got those buds percolating inside, and soon almost all of his Island Skunk colas went over the edge and started to rot. Adding another space heater and a big jar of boat dessicant to the garage made the RH plunge, and he then crisped his buds to the core.

Rot no longer a problem, he tested a dried bud. Island Skunk makes some pretty dense buds, and his were some of the best. But the one he tested, and all of the rest, had melted inside from the rot and when dried to a crisp, turned into a fine powder when crumbled. When he attempted rehydration, they wouldn't absorb moisture, even when sprayed with straight water from a spray bottle and then jarred.

8 pounds of his best buds toast, good only for making hash and then, since they were all powdered to dust, went through the finest bubble bag screen with the crystals and made poor quality hash.

So....how do you suppose he could have avoided this scenario? I know the answer, but this could be a good discussion of techniques to avoid such disasters. What would you (and I'm talking to anyone that is reading this with me and Flurple) do? What would have saved his crop from this outcome?

 

[Flurple]

lol you and me are on opposite ends... i have a tiny grow in my basement and you are working an acre... that is terrible what happened to your buddy.

adding the heat initially was bad. he also should have exposed the dessicant more slowly.

how would you have handled this giant issue?

 

[DEAN420]

I would have put a dehumidifier in the room and a oiled filled radiator to keep to room at the right temps of around 68f

 

[Irish]

lol you and me are on opposite ends... i have a tiny grow in my basement and you are working an acre... that is terrible what happened to your buddy.

adding the heat initially was bad. he also should have exposed the dessicant more slowly.

how would you have handled this giant issue?

LOL! Ayup. Opposite ends. But I'll tell ya what, after having to do the most of this harvest alone after the raid, I'd have traded seats with ya in a heartbeat.

Oh yeah, my buddy is heartbroken, since half of his crop was Island Skunk. I...I, ummm, *muttering under her breath* haven't told him what his hash is gonna turn out like. Got some bubble bags a few days ago and I know when he got them home he started straightaway making hash. It's been three days, and I've heard nada. If it were good news, he'd have called already. I just didn't have the heart to tell him. I preached all season about preparation for harvest, and the workload that would be required. Until he took his smallest, earliest plant home and realized that his boasts of "Oh, I can do this spindly thing all by myself" ended up with getting the whole family over plus a couple of friends to trim the bud from that iddy biddy Kush that took them all 6 hours.....

He was in no way prepared for the 10' Skunk, or the other 4 BIG plants in his garden. Shell shock set in after the Kush took so long, knowing that the monsters coming next were a dozen times the size he had just finished. Ergo, even with my admonishments, he still didn't understand the scope of what he was getting into. It really doesn't become real until you're actually doing it.

What could he have doneo avoid wrecking? Well let's see what others think first. *peers around* Oh look! There's that Boy Dean. Let's see what he has to say....

I would have put a dehumidifier in the room and a oiled filled radiator to keep to room at the right temps of around 68f

Sounds like you've done this before Dean.

Very good tools to have at one's disposal, and you're right on the temperature. But I was looking for a more proactive approach, something that would have prevented this whole thing entirely. It's imperative to be prepared and have the right tools available when they're needed, but you need to know when you need them before any damage is done.

Forewarned is forearmed

and

Look before you leap pretty much applies here.

When you're curing on a large scale, or any scale, it's important to think about the environment you'll be doing this in. One should know going in that Relative Humidity and Temperature are going to play a huge part in one's success and they will have to be monitored, and that you've got to be able to manipulate them both in order to control the ambient conditions to best get your produce through the drying and curing stages, and then storage.

RH can change dramatically from day to day, from hour to hour, and from one location to another in the same room. A digital weather station that calculates Relative Humidity, Temperature, and Dewpoint and has at least one remote sensor that you can place in other locations in the room is about the handiest tool one can have in the curing room. At a glance, you can tell just where you are in relation to your activities. While drying, a humidity of 50% is a good place to be. Any lower and buds will crisp pretty fast, especially if they're fresh manicured. Any higher and drying will take longer and possibly go into the danger zone deep within the bud.

Other handy tools that could be necessary to keep RH and Temp in check could possibly be a dehumidifier, a humidifier, a heater, or better yet, a combination air conditioner/heater since they generally dehumidify by default; a fan or fans, and some way to exhaust and purge the whole room or seal it up. Once the concept of controlling ambient conditions is understood, then it's fairly easy to figure out what one will have to do to get to the end of the harvest tunnel of one's particular grow.

 

[Flurple]

it definitely seems best to be prepared for any situation. now lets say you cant find any friends to help you trim, is it possible to dry and cure buds without manicuring them? what are some corners you can cut or tricks you use in a pinch? also if you need to add moisture, what is the correct procedure so you dont have buds dripping with water or mold forming?

hey irish... if your buddy wants to give it a shot i think he should get 99% isopropyl alcohol, im pretty sure he would be able to make good quality iso hash. since the trichomes dissolve in the alcohol he can use a very fine filter and only allow the liquid through. i have a few pics in the middle of my journal of a little bit i made. you can do it in large quantities pretty quickly too. let me know if he is interested and i can give you the details on what to do.

 

[Irish]

it definitely seems best to be prepared for any situation. now lets say you cant find any friends to help you trim, is it possible to dry and cure buds without manicuring them? what are some corners you can cut or tricks you use in a pinch? also if you need to add moisture, what is the correct procedure so you dont have buds dripping with water or mold forming?

hey irish... if your buddy wants to give it a shot i think he should get 99% isopropyl alcohol, im pretty sure he would be able to make good quality iso hash. since the trichomes dissolve in the alcohol he can use a very fine filter and only allow the liquid through. i have a few pics in the middle of my journal of a little bit i made. you can do it in large quantities pretty quickly too. let me know if he is interested and i can give you the details on what to do.

Heh heh heh heh...Clever question, Flurple! I know someone with that recent problem. Luckily, she has spent a couple of years learning the ins and outs of simply curing leaves. Without the buds. Just leaves.

"Why would she do that, Irish? Leaves are yuck."

Well, yes they are. But hash made from leaves and trimmings taste ever so much better when the leaves it's extracted from have a nice yummy cure on them. But I digress.

It's been touch and go working on drying and curing leafed and stemmed bud. Especially with the Juicy Fruit, since it's so heavy with leaves and the colas are monster size, and since it's been really humid and cold. Controlling the towers that I dried on this year was a breeze compared to hanging lines or racks, and truth be told, I would have lost more than the ONE bud if I had been curing on them this year.

I still don't know what I've got, so I don't know if I put my signature cure on anything this year. But here's a slice of what the curing pie looked like this year.

Took first cutting, i.e. all mature top buds from all ready plants and hung them on wire towers to dry. 7 or 8 towers in the dining room near the woodstove, 8 towers in the curing room at the opposite end of the house--each one representing 30-50lbs or so of wet weed. RH in the dining room almost non-existent due to wood heat. RH in the curing room running an unstable 75%. Colas and buds were cloaked in untrimmed leaves, filled with untrimmed leaves and all cloistered together floor to ceiling like huge green wooly mammoth legs.

It was like a constant chinese fire drill for days at a time to try and set the buds for curing--rotating towers from dining to curing room and back again--the idea being to crisp the leaves with dry woodstove heat but not the buds, so the fans might possibly wick moisture out of the bud in the much cooler, wetter curing room by being flash-dried first. The luxury of fresh trimmed bud is that it absorbs or releases moisture and gasses quite easily through all the cuts made on them. It's more difficult when moisture has to transpire through pores and waterproofed leaves, so this was an attempt to level the playing field by breaking down the leaves but not removing them.

From there, it was a juggling act inside the curing room, raising and lowering temperature to feather the buds into some safe semblance of dry, enough to cut buds off of stems and transfer to flats or tubs for curing. When dry leaves would soak up bud moisture and go soft and flaccid I'd dump the RH and raise the Temp to get them crispy and ready to soak up the bud moisture again. Eventually (about 2 weeks) they were ready to be cut off the stem and placed in tubs. All major fans came off at this stage--don't need them anymore--and buds with long singles (single leafs) were cut from the stems and placed in tubs to put the final moisture in the buds to work on curing them.

I'm just now beginning to taste the outcome as I dry manicure test bud, and for the most part, I'm fairly pleased. But I had to employ everything at my disposal to get it here--hygrometers, woodstove, air conditioner, fans, custom drying towers, radiator heater, spray bottles of distilled water and most importantly, my nose...

Your idea of using alcohol hash extraction is a really good idea on my bud's buds and I would appreciate learning more about it. I've never been there or done that, but surely it would work better than ice in this instance. I'll suggest he look into that if he's not happy with what comes out of the bubble bags. It may save the biggest part of his harvest. Thank you for the idea and offer of help. I really appreciate it.

 

[Irish]

... if you need to add moisture, what is the correct procedure so you dont have buds dripping with water or mold forming?

If your buds are hanging, raise the RH to 75-80% or even beyond and warm the room, careful to not inadvertently set off a dewpoint in your room where moisture condenses on everything (although, if you've gone softly bone dry, a dewpoint will definitely help hydrate them, but you'll have to immediately pull them right out of it when this occurs).

If they're in containers, adding fresh stems or buds can hydrate them up and start the curing process again with their own breakdown gasses. And everyone knows about orange peel and the like (though these can start and spread mold if you're not vigilant), along with sponges and wet foams and moisture beads, etc. There are all kinds of roads that lead to Rome...just have to get creative.

 

[Flurple]

funny you mention curing the leafs... i read a big thread on how curing increases potency and i decided to cure my trim before i make hash to see if it would be any better... im glad i decided to do so.

lol, wow... and i thought all the hard work was done when you picked the plant...at least on small scale grows...

ISO hash is nice and easy to make. i order the 99% isopropyl online but the 91% works pretty well too if you want to buy out the local drug store...

... chill the ISO in the freezer.

... fill whatever you want up with bud or leaf

... add enough alcohol to submurge all of it

... let sit for 1-2 mins stirring gently (1st run, the liquid should get a nice golden tan color to it)

... pour through coffee filter, shirt, bubble hash bag...whatever you want

... set liquid aside to evaporate (iso will evaporate completely even at room temp)

...after running the stuff through once i do it a 2nd time to get anything i missed. i do it while the bud is still damp from the first run so i dont waste more iso just getting it wet. just let it soak til it starts to get a green hue to it.

...if your buddy just wants to do it in 1 run i say let the ISO sit on the buds til it starts to go green and hes done.

...you can add a fan or heating pad to help the evaporation process. once it thickens up into a wet tar you can cook it (anywhere from 100F-150F is good) or leave it out for a few days to turn golden brown and eventually brown.

if i missed anything or you are still confused let me know. there are a few pics of what it looks like as its drying and finished in my journal for a visual on the stuff.

 

[Flurple]

have you got in contact with your buddy?

 

[Doc Bud]

Great thread, this is exactly what I need.

When do the buds begin to get that wonderful smell? Mine have a decreasing "green" smell, but not that dank, MJ smell.

I trimmed and began drying early Sunday Am, at about midnite.

This morning, the stems were just snappy, not totally dry, but definitely headed that way. Since that was pretty fast, I put the buds in mason jars, to be aired out and burped regularly.

 

[Irish]

have you got in contact with your buddy?

Ayup. Sent him your instructions and he's gonna try it when he can get the alcohol. His attempt at bubble bags was interesting. The trichomes went through all the screens and were found in the bottom of the bucket when he was pouring it out. Went through a 20 micron screen! Now where in the world do you find a screen smaller than that?

Great thread, this is exactly what I need.

When do the buds begin to get that wonderful smell? Mine have a decreasing "green" smell, but not that dank, MJ smell.

I trimmed and began drying early Sunday Am, at about midnite.

This morning, the stems were just snappy, not totally dry, but definitely headed that way. Since that was pretty fast, I put the buds in mason jars, to be aired out and burped regularly.

Doc, that was waaay too fast to get snappy stems. Are you curing a sativa? Are the buds fluffy? Sounds like your room was really low humidity with a higher temp. Let your buds in the jars get soft and stay soft for a while--until you get a sweet, yeasty smell. If they dried out too much this may not happen. You may have locked in the chlorophyll, which will take an age to get rid of if they really crisped up. Did you trim fresh, or were they hanging with leaf on? Details, and I'll try and help.

 

[Doc Bud]

Doc, that was waaay too fast to get snappy stems. Are you curing a sativa? Are the buds fluffy? Sounds like your room was really low humidity with a higher temp. Let your buds in the jars get soft and stay soft for a while--until you get a sweet, yeasty smell. If they dried out too much this may not happen. You may have locked in the chlorophyll, which will take an age to get rid of if they really crisped up. Did you trim fresh, or were they hanging with leaf on? Details, and I'll try and help.

Thanks Irish!

The stems were not "snappy" as in a dry toothpick. The were bendy, but the bend had a "snap". The did not snap in half. The buds are still moist, but have lost about 50% of their weight since harvest.

The strain, FLO, has some sativa characteristics and the buds are not too dense, but were really sticky.

I trimmed them up well, before drying.

 

[Flurple]

welcome aboard DOC, i thought this conversation was gonna be AB only lol. listen to IRISH, jar em til they are soft, if they dont get soft we need to get you adding moisture... in the correct way. this will give you an idea of what moist is.

these buds spent about 8 days in my closet after trim... i have a space heater in there keeping temp at 70F and humidity is around 60% i opened the door once a day to check on em and drop humidity to 50%.

here is a day or 2 later after bagging rolling up the bag tightly, not air tight but a gentle squeeze... just pressing them together they are still wet enough and sticky enough to clump

here they are all broken up.

IRISH please elaborate on my post and correct all my mistakes... any suggestions on temp, vent time, bud spacing, RH?. im new to this but its working for me.





i am going to ask again with a slight alteration to your question DOC, and multiple questions... cuz you struck a nerve in my head (no nerves in the brain haha) what would cause buds to have a weak smell even when cured correctly.

... can underventing or opening the container too often cause a bad cure even if humidity and moisture are perfect?

... is it important to achieve an anaerobic (oxygenless environment) before venting?

... the slower the better right??? so as long as i dont have mold i can slowly expose them to more dangerous but perhaps better curing environments? and if so what would these be... higher humidity or higher temp? or both?

 

[Doc Bud]

OK, this is info I've never heard before.....cool.

So, you roll your buds together in a bag and you want them to stick? I thought that monster photo above was one bud....but it's actually several!

Right now, mine are in jars, with lids on, so if they dried too fast, they should rehydrate decently. Again, they were not crispy, but dried pretty fast.

The RH in my room is between 25 and 50. It's been dry as hell up here lately.

I'm harvesting my two best plants tomorrow night, so I want to get it right!

You guys and gals are awesome to help out like this.

 

[Flurple]

read over all the posts by IRISH... i also read a few others on here under the FAQ and medical MJ section. and the buds dont need to stick from the pressure, they should be sticking because they are not dry yet. wet leaf and wet trichomes are sticky as hell. IRISH mentions crispy leafs and how to notice when to jar or bag. also that drying too quick can be fixed with jarring early. this allows the moisture still present in the core of the stems and bud to even out and remoisturize the crispy outside.

if you have low humidity combat that with smaller quarters for your cure or less ventilation and air circulation

 

[Doc Bud]

read over all the posts by IRISH... i also read a few others on here under the FAQ and medical MJ section. and the buds dont need to stick from the pressure, they should be sticking because they are not dry yet. wet leaf and wet trichomes are sticky as hell. IRISH mentions crispy leafs and how to notice when to jar or bag. also that drying too quick can be fixed with jarring early. this allows the moisture still present in the core of the stems and bud to even out and remoisturize the crispy outside.

if you have low humidity combat that with smaller quarters for your cure or less ventilation and air circulation

Well, they were still sticky when they went into the jars. I'm going to ventilate them quite a bit....but from what I've told you, have I dried too much, too fast?

What do you think my next move should be?