Quote Originally Posted by scough
What i've read everywhere, and what I'm just starting to do as well, is this: Chop the plant and hang it upside down in a cool DARK place with decent air circulation. then anywhere from a few days to a week or so, the buds should be dry enough to start curing. To see if the buds are dry enough, you should be able to bend a branch that the buds are on and it should snap. Mine took about a week.....then get some Mason jars (something airtight and glass preferably) and put only the buds inside, filling it up about 3/4 full giving it room to breath. Over the first 5 days or so, open the jars up twice a day allowing them to exchange bad air for fresh air. the second week, you only need to open them once a day to begin with......then everyother, and so on.........after 2 weeks, they are ready to smoke!.....BUT, the longer you cure, the better the buds become (as far as taste and smell). Its almost like aging wine so to speak...............anyways, this is what i picked up after doing some light reading...............and here's a pic of my bud just before going into the jars.......Strawberry cough.....
booyah! couldn't have said it better myself. the less your bud gets handled and the less it touches other bud, the more potent it will be. THC degrades very quickly when the trichromes are ruptured (from contact).