Quote Originally Posted by sheist

to my knowledge, of course theres the flowering stage, til the veins look red/brownish....
Not the veins of the leaves, either the color of the trichs, known as the crystals, or the color of the pistils, the hiars on the buds. Waiting until 85% of the hairs are red/amber, is a simple, and some what effective way of knowing when to harvest. Looking at the color of the trichs, you have to use a mini scope, min 30x zoom, to get a close look at the colors. Different colors mean different kind of highs.

Quote Originally Posted by sheist
this is as much as i kno.. so wtf is CURING?
Anyways, moving on. Curing is a process that is done to improve flavour, smell, appearance, and it is even known to increase potency a little bit. It isn't something that has to be done, but why not do it. It takes only about 4-7 days for a short, flavourful cure.

Curing is what you do right after drying the buds. After the buds have been hung up to dry, and trimmed of of the leaves, you want to place the completly dried buds in an airtight container. The best to use is a mason jar. Any size, just as long as you don't cram the buds in so they fit loosely inside. Put the lid on, and in about 12hrs or so, open the jar for about 20min to let it breath. If you touch the buds, you can see that they are kind of moist again. What happens when you seal in dried buds, is they still retain some of their moisture inside of the bud. So sealing the air in a container, what the buds do is they "sweat" out the last of their THC, improving the potency some. After 20-30min with the lid off, put the lid back on for another 12hrs or so. Keep doing this process for as long as you please. After about 3 days of doing this, you no longer need to open the container for air. I find a short cure, I do mine for about 7 days, is better than a long cure. But after the buds "sweat" out the last of their THC, the potency won't go up any. Understand curing now?

To do this, you have to make sure the buds are about 90% dru before placing them into an airtight container. If they are not dry enough, sealing in that moisture will result in moldy bud. You can tell the mold is forming when you smell a kind of ammonia smell, like catpiss kind of. If that happens, take them out of your container asap and finish drying them.

Whew, now I need a break