Once your plants have dried, it’s time to bring in the trimmers. Bucking and trimming cannabis the right way is a vital step to preparing a product that your buyers will love. This is especially true if you’re aiming to sell the best of the best, top-shelf buds.
(As a side note, I hear these terms and they drive me crazy. It’s not DEBUNKING, DEBUCKING or SHUCKING, it’s BUCKING!!! Now that I’m done ranting, we’ll get back to work.)
It is important that we get the buds off of the stem and into 5-gallon food grade buckets with lids as soon as possible. We do not want to over-dry the buds before they have had an opportunity to cure correctly. Over drying can adversely affect the curing process.
Turkey bags can work for curing but a bucket in my opinion is easier to stack, keep track of and makes sure that there is room for movement and rotation. There is a lot less chance of getting beat up, or the trichomes from getting knocked off.
Make sure to keep your buckets organized with a marking by which table they come from. It may seem like a lot of extra steps but organization is the key to amazing results. Make sure all food grade buckets with the bucked buds are now stored in your cure room with a small hygrometer when not being trimmed.
Trimming Cannabis: The Process
Put the buds in the buckets after bucking and fill them about ¾ full. Make sure to put the lid on to prevent over-drying.
Check the relative humidity of the bucket on a hygrometer. If the relative humidity is above 65%, burp buckets for an hour daily by lightly rotating and shaking them up until you get a daily consistent 58-60 RH. This may take multiple days. Once you have achieved these results it is now time to trim.
For the best trim, a lot of dispensaries prefer a hand trim. Trimming by hand can increase your dollar amount paid and really showcase the quality of your work. Alternatively, a machine trim tends to round out your buds and knock off a lot more trichomes in the process. For A buds, I highly suggest hand trimming, but when it comes to B buds I would say that a trim machine could be your best friend.
When trimming cannabis, make sure that the trimmers are all on the same page for organization. Delegate a leader that will take the dry weight before trimming, and then the weight of the trimmed buds, the trim, and the keef and log them into a grow log or spreadsheet, all sorted by table. Keep all buds in sealed buckets unless they are actively being trimmed, and re-weigh after each table’s buds are trimmed.
We need to account for all product that came from that plant so that we can analyze later. Remember to keep the trimmed and untrimmed buds in the cure room when not actively working on them until the trimming is done.
After Trimming Cannabis, It’s Time to Cure
Once you’ve gotten through all your trimming, making sure to keep tabs and data as you go, it’s time to move on to the curing phase. The end is in sight!
Check out my guide on Curing Cannabis to make sure you achieve the best results possible.
Related Glossary Terms
Continue learning with these related glossary terms:
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