How to Dry Your Grow

Good things come to those who wait. We wait for our milk to become cheese, we wait for our grapes to ferment into wine, why wouldn’t we wait for our herb to become the best version of itself? Here’s the rundown on why we think a thorough drying process is important, and how you can do it at home to get the most out of your grow.

First things first.

Drying your grow is going to extend it’s shelf life, enhance it’s quality and what’s more, a longer drying process will benefit your herb  by helping it to maintain a robust and diverse terpene profile.

The reason we advocate for a longer drying process is simple.

To dry out your grow quickly, you’ll need higher heat (duh).

High temperatures draw out almost all terpenes from your herb, in fact even conditions above room temperature will negatively impact terpene levels.

This means any tool meant to speed up the drying process is strictly off limits – step away from the microwave.

A good rule of thumb: If you can smell the air in your drying space, you can be pretty confident that your grow is losing potency, flavour and fragrance.

If that wasn’t enough to convince you to be patient, opting for a longer drying time is known to reduce the immediate harshness you sometimes get from your dried plant.

For a grow that does everything you want it to do (we’re talking taste, smell and good times), you’re going to want a dry time of between 7 and 12 days. As your herb loses moisture, it will get smaller in both weight and size.

Now, let’s talk about drying conditions.

Nobody wants a mouldy stash, so to prevent this, we suggest drying your grow in an environment that allows air to move around all sides of your herb.

You can do this by hanging your grow like you would traditionally hang herbs like sage and rosemary, or you can use a drying rack.

If you’d like to use a drying rack, we highly recommend the 8 tier Flower Tower by Geopot which you can find linked below (just make sure everything is spaced apart and you flip your grow on the regular).

While we’re on the subject of airflow, you might also be tempted to speed up the drying process with the help of a fan. While it’s fine to use an air conditioner or dehumidifier when drying, you should avoid fans unless absolutely necessary as you risk drying your grow out too quickly.

If you feel you must use a fan to help speed along the drying process, we recommend positioning it so that airflow is circulating around your buds, rather than directly on them.

As a rule of thumb, you should be aiming for a drying temperature of around 21 degrees with 50% humidity.

Check your grow regularly, when you notice the outsides of your buds are dry to the touch, you can move on to curing. Another good test to gauge whether your buds are dried properly is to take a branch and bend it. If the branch snaps, your buds are ready to move on to curing.

And that’s it, folks. Drying your grow properly makes such a huge difference to the end product and it’s not nearly as difficult as it’s cracked up to be.

Hopefully we’ve answered any questions you had about this process, but feel free to reach out to us at admin@aquaponicswa.com.au if we’ve missed anything.

As always, thanks for reading and happy growing.