Drying Buds

[Stardawg909]

As others have said do not use a dehumidifier for drying, I made the mistake 2 grows ago when I 1st bought it and it just ruins it all, smells like hay in the end I had 55 oz of green hay, never again, live and learn, I always learn the hard way but at least I learn

[Stardawg909]

On 7/10/2021 at 10:08 PM, ukblazer187 said:

 

I was only going to have it automatically turn on if humidity went above 50 - 55% RH.

Exactly what I did, don't do it. 

[OneMorePuff]

I dry in a grow tent in my shed and I'm also in the south of the UK with our high RH, so I can probably offer some insight here as drying is one of the very few areas of growing I've actually nailed from my first grow.

 

As others have mentioned, it's all about getting as slow a dry as possible.  Low RH and high heat are the main offenders here.  Light should also be avoided as it degrades THC.  The nice thing about the high RH we have here is that if you get your conditions right, you can hang a whole plant untrimmed for a good two weeks and it actually will be really hard to over dry because the ambient RH is in the 60's - perfect curing humidity!  So they can literally just hang there and cure 'on the vine' so to speak.  In fact I find I often have to bring them in from the shed after 10-14 days and bag them up in paper bags in a room that is lower RH just to get that last bit of moisture out evenly - this is a good thing.  Slower = better.  It's normally around three weeks before my buds are settled at the correct curing RH in their jars, and from the on they taste beautiful and are genuinely ready to smoke, three weeks from harvest.

 

The extraction fan/passive intake will not overdry your buds, even if turned up to full it's not like the air will be rushing past the buds in the tent, and really you only need to it turned high enough until you see a bit of negative pressure (sides of the tent sucking in slightly) and no higher.

 

Any actual air blowing on the buds will dry them out too fast, so no oscillating fans and no dehumidifier in the tent.  If, once the plants are hanging then RH in the drying tent is higher than 70RH, then I would use the dehumidifier if turning up the extraction doesn't work (which it should) but I'd use it outside the tent near the intake.  That one on your list won't be powerful to do much though, I bought one like that and it did bugger all, too small.  You'd want around a 10L to actually make a difference.  If your planning on growing inside at some point in this climate then you will need it for the flower phase, that's when I find mine useful, I don't use it for the drying phase.  The dehumidifier adds heat, which you don't want.

 

It's not a terrible idea to aim for a slightly lower RH for the first day or two of the dry (like 55%) just to get yourself out of the mold danger zone, but from then on you'll be fine running up to 70%RH.  Some drying guides actually recommend 70% for a nice slow dry, and I've tried it and it works, although I generally aim for closer to 60% with temps around 15-20c as 70% does make my balls itch slightly .  My experience is the temps are less important than RH management, although as it climbs above 20c your dry time does decrease, which is bad.  I deal with temp swings when drying in my shed and I'm still able to get a good 14 days dry before trimming and jarring, and even the buds usually climb to 65+ RH in the jars and I need to open them up and air them out for another day or two.

 

If you temp is too high and RH is too short and it seems like they're gonna be dry too fast (less than 7-10 days) then here's what you do -

 

Cut them down from the drying tent and cut the separate stalks off the main stem, but don't remove the buds from the stalks.  Get some big brown paper bugs and put your buds on stalks in those with a hygrometer, and then loosely crimp the bag shut and put them in a cool dark place.  This is like an 'in between' stage of drying and curing.  You're sweating the moisture out from the middle of the buds to the outside so the moisture content is even.  If the RH in the bag goes up above 70, open it up, if it's sitting comfortably between 60-65 then you can jar them up for curing, and if it's below 55 you overdried it. Break out the bovidas and hope for the best? (dunno, luckily I haven't done this yet)

 

Good luck.

 

edit: I bought that exact dehumidifier.  Don't bother.  Extracts about a cup of water a day from the air.

 

Edited August 12, 2021 by OneMorePuff

[MindSoup]

An Idea I saw in the Outdoor section for a budget drying set up I thought was cool. Basically you make an air tight box, and then use silica gel to do the drying part, costs basically nothing to build one. 

 

You hang the Silica is little packets, around the box, get the stuff that changes colour when it's saturated, you can dry it out in the oven and re use. 

 

Few people tried it and apparently it works well. Have a search through the site for more info. 

 

E2A it was in the thread below.

 

 

Edited August 12, 2021 by MindSoup

[Wakko78]

That dehum won’t come on auto wid inkbird you have to press button I bought an old one off gum and it’s perfect, but I don’t use it for drying