You’ve been planting your cannabis garden for the past few months now, carefully and excitedly. And now comes the time to conclude the process. You can feel a slight discomfort setting in. Do you, like many others, dread the trimming process?
For new growers, many questions can pop up. Do I use hand-trimming or bud-trimmer machines? Wet trimming or dry trimming?Well, we’re here to tell you seven easy tips and tricks to improve the bud trimming of your indoor cannabis garden.
1. Choose Your Technique: Hand or Bud-Trimmer Machines?
Well, in most cases, experts suggest hand-trimming. There are a couple of reasons for that.
With the growing cannabis industry for medicinal and recreational purposes, the demand has risen, which in turn calls for the need to get the product in its final form quicker. For this purpose, trimming machines come in handy.
These machines are not only expensive and call for maintenance costs, but they also effectively reduce the potency and flavor of the plant, resulting in reduced trichomes.
How do they do that? Well, by simply being machines. Machines are not sensitive to the unique shape and size of each flower. They trim in a standardized manner.
However, if you grow cannabis at home, you can learn to trim yourself.
If you’re a commercial grower, you may want to hire skilled trimmers.
That said, the benefit of hand-trimming is that you get to preserve the utmost potency and flavor of the nug. Hand-trimming is more precise and profitable in terms of benefits, although, of course, it does pull in more effort and time.
But don’t worry, it’s all worth it, especially for your special indoor cannabis garden.
2. Dry Trimming or Wet Trimming?
Wet trimming is when you trim the flowers loaded with moisture. On the other hand, if you trim them after they lose the moisture content, it’s called dry trimming.
Which One is Better?
There are different opinions regarding this. You might want to see what suits you best.
Wet trimming is preferable when:
- Mold bothers you
- Has high humidity (above 60 RH)
- You wish for the buds to dry faster, out of the lack of space or other reasons
The downside to wet trimming is that it is a sticky process, which might have you clean your utensils a couple of times or replace them. If you are nitty-picky for cleanliness, you might want to go for dry trimming.
Dry trimming is preferable when:
- You don’t mind the mold
- The place where you live offers low humidity (below 45 RH)
- You are looking for compact and tight buds
- You want the buds to dry slowly and retain their flavor.
Many prefer dry trimming as it is a clean and tidy process and much lighter on your shears. However, with dry trimming, your bud will likely lose its greenish color early on and adopt a brownish coloration.
You can use both methods according to your preferences. At the end of the day, it’s about your personal journey with cannabis.
3. Choose Your Tools Wisely
Choosing the right weed growing supplies is essential for indoor growers. Picking the perfect trimmer is essential for finalizing the growing process.
A trim tray allows you to work more efficiently and helps you save all that loose THC.
Sharp, sterilized pruning shears are a treat for trimmers. You also want to ensure your trimming scissors are ergonomic.
Why? As you’re going to trim for a good few hours, so working with low-quality scissors can make your hand muscles cry in no time.
As you work through with your buds, there will be sticky raisins hugging your shears soon enough, especially if you’re trimming wet. Thus, it is always ideal to have a pair of scissors that you can use interchangeably.
Growers often choose between spring-loaded scissors and standard scissors.
Although they appear effective and quick, the con of using spring-loaded scissors is hand fatigue, which comes on quicker as opposed to standard scissors.
Our recommendation is the Japanese Prune Shears. They are pointed, sharp, ergonomic, and easy to clean.
4. Handling is Key
As growers, one of your utmost primary concerns is to bring the bud to its final form all the while preserving its flavor, potency, and trichome levels. For this purpose, appropriate handling becomes a necessity.
As the flowers of buds dry up, they become more sensitive to your touch. Every time you touch the flowers, they degrade. So the idea is to handle them in a way that reduces these damages as much as possible.
All you need to ensure is that you’re always touching the stem or the branch. Try to stay safe from your lovely flowers as much as possible.
5. Go Bottom-to-Top and Big-to-Small
When you’re beginning trimming, an expert way is to go bottom-up. Why is this method convenient? Well, it aligns well with your eyes and hands.
Before trimming the individual nugs, hold the branch from the bottom and work your way up. This will give you a good view of the entire bunch
Next, when the turn is of the individual flower, try going from big to small. Working your way systematically, you can trim the big fan leaves first, and then move on to the smaller sugar leaves.
When trimming the fan leaves, make sure not to dive deep into its root and damage the flower. Snip it from the base, with the least harm to the flower.
6. Those Fancy Manicured Buds, Store Them Well!
After all of your hours of hard work, you want to make sure your aesthetic, lovely buds get proper storage.
Glass mason jars work as cool storage for your dried and cured buds. You can store them in other containers too, depending on how much time they have until they go in for curing.
7. Plan Your Entertainment
Our last tip could be the handiest one for you. We realize bud trimming can be a long and tedious, repetitive process. But, who said it has to be boring?
Anything that appeals to your hearing more than your visuals is recommended as entertainment, such as music, audiobooks, podcasts, and the likes.
If you want to speed up the process, you might want to consider buying a decent bud trimmer machine. The right equipment improves the quality and speed of trimming tremendously.
Wrapping Up with Improving Your Trimming Process
Bud-trimming isn’t hard, as you might’ve picked up. But, it does require some practice to establish grip and gear.
And, of course, our old friend; patience. Practice our tips with patience and you’ll be trimming like a whiz pretty soon!