Cultivating a thriving crop is essential for both achieving top-notch quality and maximizing your profits. To ensure your crop’s health, it’s crucial to maintain and harvest your weed just right. And that’s precisely what we’re here to guide you through – the professional way to trim weed!
Use this guide to learn about the importance of trimming, when to trim your weed, the tools you’ll need, and step-by-step instructions to trim your weed beautifully!
Trimming is the process of preparing cannabis plants for drying. During the trimming process, trimmers carefully cut and clean up the plant until only the buds are left.
There are a few reasons why trimming is essential.
First, trimming ensures the purity of the harvest. If you don’t trim your crop before drying and selling, the harvest will contain excess plant matter like fan and sugar leaves. These don’t contain much (or any) THC and can mess with the flavor and potency of your cannabis.
People who buy your untrimmed harvest won’t appreciate smoking cannabis leaves instead of buds.
Second, trimming removes a lot of excess moisture from the harvest. Leaves contain a lot of water, which gets caught with the buds. Trimming ensures a better overall dry and a better smoking experience.
Lastly, trimming makes harvesting and selling easier. Prepping your buds equals quicker turnover, and neat cannabis buds look better, which makes them sell better. Trimming is necessary if you want to produce high-quality weed and increase profits.
Knowing when to trim your cannabis plants is just as important as knowing how to trim them. If you trim your plants too soon, it could ruin the crop and your profits.
To determine if the plant is ready for trimming, inspect the resin color on the buds. These are the little hairs sticking out from the bud. When the plant is ready, these resin-coated trichomes change from its usual white to an aged red and brown.
Depending on your strain, the resin might change from white to cloudy white instead of brown.
Because the top of the plant is closer to the light source, it matures faster. The top buds might be ready to harvest, while the lower rung buds still need to grow more.
If this is the case for you, trim only the ready crop and let the underdeveloped buds grow until the resin-coated trichomes are amber or cloudy white.
Next, gather the tools you’ll need for a quick and safe trim.
You’ll need trimming shears and scissors. Scissors work perfectly for smaller branches and fan and sugar leaves. Sheers or pruners are better for thick branches.
Sharpen all your tools to ensure a clean and quick cut, especially if you only do a partial trim. Damaging the plant could harm the buds still developing on the stem.
Next, pick a small, comfortable chair for you to sit on. Trimming can take long, sometimes multiple days. Sitting on the ground or squatting is only viable for a short time.
Collect a few trimming trays to sort your harvest. Any tray should work, but we recommend using shallow trays like cookie sheets. They can hold more product and don’t damage the trichomes or collect resin.
If you are only gathering your buds, you only need trays for the harvest. But, if you are also collecting other parts on the plants for products like hashish, prepare more trays to separate all the cuttings.
Cannabis plants are fragile, and the trimming process makes them more susceptible to disease. One way to ensure no pathogens pass from you to the plants or from plant to plant is to keep everything clean.
Keep disinfectant wipes and a rag handy to clean your shears, scissors, and other surfaces during the trimming process.
Always wear latex gloves when trimming weed. No matter how careful you are, your hands are going to come into contact with cannabis resin. The residue is difficult to remove and can be very sticky. Gloves act as a barrier that you can take off and replace when needed.
Wearing gloves is also good for your health. Overexposure to any compound can lead to irritation, and cannabis resin is no different. Processing cannabis can cause a cannabis allergy, a heartbreaking problem for any smoker. So, always protect your hands with gloves.
There are multiple ways of trimming, and your chosen method primarily depends on your preference. Let’s look at wet, dry, and machine trimming and who each technique is good for.
Wet trimming involves trimming the plant before drying it out. This means the plant is still “wet” with fluids and resin, which means it’s a bit stickier than dry trimming. Wet trimming is excellent for trimmers who want to finish the bulk of the trimming work in one go.
During dry trimming, the cannabis plant is cut and hung up to dry. The trimming process takes place after a few days when the plant has dried out. Many of the leaves and branches snap right off.
If wet and dry trimming doesn’t interest you, you can invest in machine trimming. While machine trimming is faster, it can be expensive. Machines are also overkill for smaller cannabis operations.
Machine trimming is a viable option if you trim a big crop that would be more expensive in human labor or if you’re trimming frequently.
Next, let’s look at how to trim your weed plants. Before you get into the actual trimming, familiarize yourself with the 4 stages of weed growth and cannabis plant anatomy to ensure you’re cutting the right spots at the right time.
Get comfortable on your chair and set up your trimming trays. Put on your gloves and disinfect the shears and scissors.
When that’s done, start the trimming process by cutting the plant into smaller pieces. If you are only trimming the top part, cut the stem to separate the upper and lower parts of the plant. If you are trimming the entire plant, take your shears and cut the base of the plant.
Dry trimming enthusiasts can hang the plant and let it dry for up to a week before continuing the trimming process. Wet trimmers can move straight onto the next step.
Next, remove all the fan leaves. Fan leaves don’t contain any note-worthy amounts of THC, so you can dispose of these as you trim them.
Sugar leaves are the small leaves in the cannabis bud. They’re often hidden behind compact cannabis flowers and require extra finesse to remove. Shears are too big to remove them.
Instead, opt for thin but sharp scissors that can carefully reach into the bud and snip the sugar leaf stems. It’s okay if some remain. But the more you remove, the better the cannabis potency.
Sugar leaves contain quite a bit of THC, so you can keep them and develop them into a different product such as cannabutter or cannabis tea.
Next, remove the buds from the stem. Leave a small section of stem to hang the buds from, but remove everything else. If the buds are too big, hindering the drying process, you can gently separate them into smaller pieces.
Place the buds on the trimming trays and continue trimming and shaping the buds until all plant matter but the cannabis flower is gone.
Put whatever trim you have left – ones with trichomes or resin on – on the extra trimming trays. You can use these to create separate cannabis products like hashish and resin wax.
Once the trimming process is done and your crop is drying, clean your tools. Leaving your tools dirty is a common mistake among beginners and one we suggest you avoid.
Use pure alcohol or coconut oil to remove the resin from your tools. Finally, rinse, dry, and disinfect all items.
To ensure a good crop yield, high-potency cannabis, and increased profits, you need to trim your plants perfectly. While trimming is essential for cannabis plants, the process can be a tad confusing for beginners.
Gather your tools, a comfortable chair, and latex gloves before getting to work. Use this weed-trimming guide to ensure you do your plants justice.
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