Curing And Storage

Dry weed is smokeable. Cured weed is good.

The cure is the last two to eight weeks of the process and it costs you nothing but patience and about twenty dollars of glass. It is also the step people skip, because at the end of the dry you finally have a pile of finished looking bud and the urge to be done is overwhelming.

What is happening in the jar is slow. Residual moisture in the center of each bud redistributes outward, so the whole thing reaches an even moisture content instead of being dry outside and damp inside. Meanwhile, chlorophyll and other plant compounds continue breaking down, and those are what make fresh weed taste like hay and burn harsh.

Two weeks of curing makes a noticeable difference. Four weeks makes a large one. Past eight weeks the returns get small, and you are just storing it well.

What you need#

• Wide mouth glass mason jars. Quart size is ideal, about two dollars each. Wide mouth so you can get a hand in without crushing anything. Glass, not plastic, because plastic holds static and absorbs smell.
• Small hygrometers that fit inside jars. Five to eight dollars each, and worth putting one in every jar. Curing by feel is guessing.
• Two way humidity packs at 62 percent. Boveda and Integra are the common brands, a couple dollars per pack. Optional for curing, genuinely useful for storage.

Skip vacuum sealing at this stage. The cure needs a small amount of gas exchange, and a vacuum bag prevents it.

Filling the jars#

Fill each jar about three quarters full. Buds should settle in loosely, not be packed. You need air space above them, because that air is where the moisture equalizes.

Do not crush anything getting it in there. Handle buds by the stem where you can.

Put a hygrometer in each jar, seal it, and wait two hours before reading. The first reading right after sealing is meaningless because the jar's air has not equalized with the bud yet.

Jar reading after 2 hours	What it means	What to do
Above 70%	Too wet, real mold risk	Take it all out and dry another 12 to 24 hours
65 to 70%	Slightly wet	Burp every few hours today, leave lids off 20 minutes
58 to 65%	Correct	Normal burping schedule
Below 55%	Over dried	Add a 62% humidity pack, seal, check in a few days

Burping#

Burping means opening the jar to exchange the air inside and let accumulated moisture out.

Week one: open each jar once or twice a day, for 10 to 15 minutes. Leave the lid off, and give the jar a gentle roll or a light shake with the lid back on so the buds move and are not always resting on the same spot.

Week two: once a day, five minutes.

Weeks three and four: once every two or three days.

After a month: once a week or when you take some out, which is effectively the same thing.

Smell the jar every time you open it. That is half the point of burping. A jar that smells sharp, like ammonia or like a wet basement, is telling you the bud went in too wet and is starting to break down anaerobically. Pull everything out immediately, spread it on a rack for 12 to 24 hours, and jar it again.

Where to keep the jars#

Cool, dark, and stable. A closet, a cabinet, a drawer. Not on a windowsill, not on top of the refrigerator, not anywhere that swings from 60F to 85F over the course of a day.

Light is the biggest enemy here. UV degrades THC steadily, which is why glass jars belong in the dark despite being clear. Heat is second. Oxygen is third, and slower.

Sixty to seventy degrees is fine for the cure and for long term storage.

Storing it past the cure#

Once the cure is done, the job changes from developing the weed to not ruining it. Well stored flower holds up well for a year, and is still perfectly usable at two, just weaker and less aromatic.

• Keep it in the glass. Jars at 62 percent with a humidity pack is the whole system. Replace the pack when it goes hard.
• Open jars as rarely as you can. If you have a big harvest, jar most of it and leave those jars sealed, keeping one working jar you actually dig into.
• Do not refrigerate it. The temperature swing every time you take it out causes condensation, which is exactly what you spent a month avoiding.
• The freezer is a real option, with a caveat. Frozen, sealed and undisturbed, weed keeps for years. But frozen trichomes are brittle and snap off with any handling, so if you are going to open it, take it out, let it come to room temperature fully sealed, and only then open it. For most home growers with a jar or two, room temperature and a humidity pack is simpler and good enough.

What "done" feels like#

Around week two, the hay smell is mostly gone and the strain's actual smell comes forward. Around week four, the smoke is noticeably smoother and the flavor is distinct rather than generic.

A properly cured bud squeezes and springs back. It should not crumble to powder, and it should not feel spongy or cool to the touch. It grinds cleanly and it burns evenly, leaving light gray ash rather than black chunks.

That is the whole track#

You started with a seed and a tent and you finished with jars of your own weed. That is fifteen steps and three or four months and it is a real thing to have done.

It is probably mids. Most first harvests are. You almost certainly harvested a little early, your pH wandered somewhere in week five, and the dry went faster than it should have because your house is drier than 60 percent. None of that means you did it wrong. It means you did it once, which is the only way anyone learns any of this.

The second grow is where the numbers on these pages start meaning something, because now you have watched them happen. Read your log, pick the one thing that went worst, and fix that one.