Chapter 12

Harvesting and Post-Harvest

IN THIS CHAPTER

Figuring out when to harvest your plants at their peak

Flushing the nutrients out of your grow medium pre-harvest

Harvesting your plants and calculating your yields

Prepping your flower for storage and use — drying, curing, and trimming

Storing your bud properly to preserve its quality

You just invested eight to ten weeks of diligent effort and expertise to grow the perfect cannabis bud/flower. Now what? As harvest time approaches, you need to start thinking about when and how to harvest your plants and then dry and cure them to create the highest quality product available. After all, your harvest and post-harvest activities can make or break the final product. They can be the difference between smooth, tasty bud and a mushy or a dry and brittle mess. The time and effort invested in doing it right (and figuring out how to do it right) will be well worth it!

Biological and chemical activities continue long after the plant is cut down. Properly drying and curing your plants is essential for ensuring the quality of the final product. You don’t want your bud too wet or too dry coming out of the drying and curing process. Too wet, and mold becomes an issue; too dry, and you lose terpenes. Strike the right balance, and you preserve the health and flavor of your bud and maximize its potency.

In this chapter, we walk you through the process of harvest and post-harvest, beginning with deciding when to harvest and ending with storing and packaging your end product.

Deciding When to Harvest: Timing Is Everything!

As soon as buds begin to form on your carefully cultivated plants, your eagerness to harvest begins to build, and you become more susceptible to making the common mistake of harvesting too early. The other, less common, mistake is to wait too long, at which point the cannabinoids and terpenes begin to break down. So, how do you know when to harvest your plants?

In this section, we answer that question by presenting several methods for figuring out when to harvest your plants at their peak.

Keeping an eye on the trichomes

The best way to tell when your plants are ready for harvest is to keep an eye on the trichomes, which comprise the glistening, sticky substance that covers the cannabis buds. Upon closer examination (which usually requires a microscope), you can see that these trichomes actually look somewhat like tiny mushrooms, with a head and a stalk. (See Chapter 2 for more about cannabis plant anatomy.) The trichomes contain a large majority of the cannabinoids and terpenes in the plant.

When your plant is covered in buds, and you can see the glistening masses of trichomes, use a small, hand-held magnifier (30–100x magnification) or a jeweler’s loupe to examine the trichomes closely. Depending on the plant strain (and your eyesight), you may be able to distinguish changes in trichome opacity and color without magnification; trichomes may be considerably larger on some plant strains than on others. Changes in color indicate ripeness:

• Clear/translucent: When the plant is in its early flowering stage, trichomes appear clear or translucent.
• Opaque: Trichomes gradually become more opaque (white or cloudy) as the buds mature.
• Amber: When buds are fully mature (ripe for harvest), the trichomes turn amber. At this point, the buds may start to degrade.
• Brown: When buds are past their peak, the trichomes turn a darker and darker brown.

You can now purchase microscopes that attach to smart phones and display magnified images on the smart phone’s screen, which can really come in handy for this task.

Depending on personal preference, most growers begin their harvest when a quarter of the trichomes have turned amber. Others prefer to not let any trichomes begin to degrade and start harvesting as soon as they see a majority of cloudy trichomes.

THE LIFECYCLE OF A TRICHOME

As a plant matures, trichomes change both in color and size. A trichome starts small and swells up like a balloon as it ages. Cannabinoids and terpenes accumulate in the trichome. The trichome gland head grows heavier and more bulbous as its secretory vesicles synthesize oil. The gland head eventually degrades and falls off as the plant nears the end of its life. When the heads fall off the trichomes, the bud’s potency declines dramatically.

Observing the pistils and stigmas

The pistil is the reproductive organ of a female cannabis flower. Stigmas are the vivid, hair-like strands of the pistil designed to collect pollen from male plants. (As explained in Chapter 11, you don’t want your female plants pollinated because they then spend more energy on producing seeds than on producing quality buds. In addition, unless you’re breeding plants, you don’t want seeds in your bud.)

Over the course of a plant’s life, the stigmas start out white and gradually change to yellow, orange, red, purple, and then brown depending on the strain. A good rule of thumb is to harvest your plants when about half the buds are covered with orange and red stigmas. When they begin to turn purple and then brown, bud quality is on the decline.

Pistils and stigmas have an important role in reproduction and are useful for determining when to harvest, but, unlike trichomes, they generally don’t affect a flower’s potency or flavor.

Tracking leaf senescence

Leaf senescence is a term that describes the process of deterioration of a plant’s leaves as it ages. Chlorophyll degradation during leaf senescence results in an increase in carotenoids (mainly yellow, orange, or red fat-soluble pigments) and anthocyanins (mainly blue, violet, or red flavonoid pigments), which cause fall colors. These same colors appear late in a cannabis plant’s flowering cycle. When most of a plant’s leaves turn yellow, it’s a good sign that the plant is ready for harvest.

If a plant is properly flushed, waiting until it’s mostly or entirely senesced ensures that very little to no residual nutrients remain in the plant. These residual nutrients can contribute to a harsh or unpalatable smoke. See the later section “Flushing Your Plants Prior to Harvest.”

Don’t mistake plant stress for ripeness. Leaf senescence in the earlier stages of a plant’s growth cycle indicate stress, possibly from too much or too little water, a disease, or a pest. By knowing the average time-to-harvest for the plant your growing (as explained in the next section), you’ll have a better idea of whether the senescence is due to stress or is a sign that the plant is ready for harvest.

Find out the strain’s expected time-to-harvest

If you buy seeds or clones from a legal and reputable seller or they show up in bud you or someone you know purchased, and you know the strain, you can usually find out the approximate number of weeks required for the plants to mature. This information is included in seed catalogues (such as Royal Queen Seeds at www.royalqueenseeds.com) and printed on the label of seed packets. It may also be included when you purchase clones.

Using time-to-harvest estimates is the worst way to determine when plants are ready to harvest. These estimates are great for planning your grow schedule and knowing when to start checking the pistils, stigmas, and trichomes more closely, but harvest times vary considerably based not only on plant strain but also on growing conditions.

Harvesting Your Plants

Harvesting is easy — you simply cut down the entire plant just below the lowest branch using large, sharp pruning shears or harvesting loppers. The other option is to cut off branches individually. However, if you’re growing commercially, you must cut down the entire plant, so you can determine and record its wet weight (see the next section for details).

Mitigate cross contamination of any plants that aren’t being harvested by limiting movement of harvested plants thru the grow space and covering or culling any plants that may be infested or infected.

After harvesting your mature plants, you can either weigh and calculate your yield, as explained in the next section, or skip to the drying process as explained in the later section “Drying, Curing, and Trimming Flower Post-Harvest.” If you’re harvesting commercially, you have no choice but to weigh and calculate your yield first. If you’re a home grower, the choice is yours. Some home growers like to weigh and calculate their yields and keep detailed records, so they can tell the impact of changing variables, such as light exposure and nutrients used for each crop.

Weighing and Calculating Your Yield (Dry/Wet Weights)

In a commercial setting, regulations require that all plant matter be weighed and tracked through different stages of harvest and post-harvest to prevent diversion — having any of the plant matter transferred outside the system used to regulate it. Commercial growers may be required to report weights of product as it’s harvested, dried, and cured along with the weight of all green waste. By weighing product as it proceeds through the various stages of harvest and post-harvest, you can also identify points at which weights change, especially from wet to dry and pre- to post-trim weights.

If you have a home grow you may have less need to weigh your plants, but you may be interested in tracking for yourself and comparing or predicting yields.

Calibrate your scale(s) prior to weighing anything to ensure accuracy; check the scale’s manual for instructions. If you’re a commercial grower, use a certified scale with buckets or tubs into which you will load the plant matter. Sterilize the buckets or tubs between batches. If your weights are off at any weigh-in, you may have some explaining to do to the regulators and can be at risk of losing your license.

Determining the plant’s wet weight

Wet weight is the weight of the total plant including fan leaves and stems. Much of this is green waste not included in the final weight of the yield after the plant has been manicured (trimmed).

ESTIMATING DRY WEIGHTS

Regulations don’t allow companies to report ballpark figures, but if you’re a home grower, you can make a rough estimate of the dry weight of a yield based on the wet weight.

In general 50 percent of a plant’s wet weight is stem weight. If it’s a long-stalked sativa, up to 80 percent can end up as green waste including stems, leaves, and final trimming. However, bud density and whether you trim the buds wet (as opposed to dry trim) can also impact the accuracy of that estimate.

In essence, depending on the strain, you can estimate between 20 and 50 percent to be viable bud weight after drying.

Weighing after bucking or shucking and maybe rough trimming

After determining a plant’s wet weight, you buck or shuck and perhaps rough-trim the buds and then weigh the buds without all the plant matter you removed. Bucking and shucking is the act of removing buds from stem. In your home grow you do this with a knife or scissors. Commercial operations may use a “munch” or “twister” machine:

• A munch machine is comprised of rollers and blades. You stick the end of the stem between rollers that draw it into the machine and kick it out the other side into a collection bag leaving mostly bud behind. The machines are becoming standard for the larger grow operations, but most smaller operations still hand shuck. (A person can hand-shuck about 10 pounds per hour depending on the cannabis strain, the weight of the buds, and the length of the node space. In contrast, a munch machine can shuck up to about 150 pounds per hour.)
• A twister machine rotates buds down a large, slowly spinning tube equipped with tumblers or blades to not only separate buds from stems but also to perform a rough trim — removing some excess sugar leaves from the buds. However, they’re accused of damaging the buds and knocking off trichomes. Organizations that hand trim their buds without these machines usually make a big deal of the effort (and it takes a lot) that provides a higher quality bud. As an end user you pay for the quality upgrade.

Whether you’re hand-shucking or using a machine, wear gloves and safety goggles. When using machinery, read and follow all safety precautions, including wearing earplugs or headphones to protect your hearing. Sterilize all equipment with isopropyl alcohol before and after use, between working with different strains to prevent contamination, and at the end of the day.

Although many commercial and home growers dry and cure their cannabis before trimming it, we recommend wet trimming for a higher quality product. The trichomes on fresh plants are more pliable and malleable; they won’t break off as easily during the process. The loss of trichomes (kief) lowers the potency of the bud. The benefit of trimming dry bud (over wet trimming) is that you can make it look the way you want it to. It won’t change shape or size after trimming as a wet bud typically does as it dries. See the later section “Trimming bud” for instructions on how to hand-trim bud (wet or dry).

Weighing green waste and wet bud

After bucking or shucking and perhaps trimming your bud, you now have two piles — a pile of bud, and a pile of everything else (green waste). You may have a third pile of trim, because trim has some value, as well, but keep it separate from your bud. Now you’re ready to weigh your green waste and wet bud and perhaps your trim. Simply take turns loading each onto your scale and taking and recording your readings.

In addition to being required by law for commercial operations, weighing wet buds helps you determine how much moisture you’re losing during the drying and curing phases. In general, you can anticipate a 90 percent loss from wet to dry due to loss of water and other volatile compounds such as terpenes. However, weight loss from wet to dry varies depending on the plant strain and other variables.

Green waste rules vary among jurisdictions. Some allow you to use green waste for products, and some may even let you sell it to a third party to create hemp products such as rope (which is still used by the U.S. Navy). Others bar you from using it at all. Rules may also vary regarding disposal; for example, whether you’re permitted to compost it. As always, check your regulations.

Don’t forget to record dry trim and green waste weights. Refer to your jurisdiction to find out which weights you need to report, but a good rule of thumb is to weigh everything before and after each stage of the harvest and post-harvest process.

Drying, Curing, and Trimming Flower Post-Harvest

After harvesting your plant (and bucking, shucking, and weighing it, if grown commercially), you’re ready to dry, cure, and trim — the final steps before selling or consuming your product (or gifting some of it to someone you really like). In this section, we lead you through the process.

Drying your plant or buds

Plants and buds must be dried to remove most of the moisture in preparation for curing. The drying process differs a little depending on whether you’re a home or commercial grower:

• Home grower: Home growers and small commercial operations generally hang entire branches or stems that hold the buds. You can use clothes hangers or string a clothes line across a room to hold the branches or stems. Whatever rig you use make sure it’s sturdy enough to hold your plants and not in a highly trafficked area. Space the branches and stems far enough apart so they’re not touching each other. The benefit of this method is that you don’t need to handle the buds (to flip them over, for example), so buds retain their trichomes, and you have more symmetrical buds that are more potent. The drawback is that more space is required.
• Commercial grower: Use a tray rack like those used in cafeterias, with removable food-grade drying trays (trays with fine mesh screens at the bottom that allow the air to circulate). Place buds evenly on the trays with sufficient space between them to allow the air to circulate freely. Place the trays on every other level of the racks, so you have six to ten inches of space between trays.

Before you hang your buds or place them on trays, clean and sterilize your equipment with isopropyl alcohol and let it dry to mitigate mold, bacteria, and pests.

Regardless of whether you’re a home or commercial grower, the key to drying your bud is consistency and evenness throughout the process. Proper drying relies on the right temperature and humidity, as explained later in this section.

Go low and slow! Dry your cannabis in a cool, dry, dark, and well-ventilated place. Time will do the rest. The goal isn’t to completely dry out the bud but to remove most of the moisture and distribute the remaining moisture evenly through the bud. The outside surface naturally dries faster. Time allows the moisture trapped inside the bud and stem to migrate outward, resulting in a more uniform distribution of moisture.

Plan for two weeks at the designated temperature and humidity with daily fluffing activities and rack rotation as we cover later in this section.

THE CHEMICAL PROCESSES YOU DON’T SEE

During the time in the drying room, buds undergo certain chemical changes that increase the potency and quality of the product:

• Certain compounds break down and combine with other compounds to create THCa and other cannabinoids. Proper drying and curing increases THCa content, which increases the potency of the final product.
• Chlorophyll — the pigment that gives plants their green color — is broken down, which results in a smoother smoke (not harsh).
• Nitrogen is also broken down during the process.
• Sugars remaining in buds are broken down by beneficial microbes, so the buds burn more evenly. Sugars don’t evaporate when you smoke, leaving behind black, clumpy ash.

The moral of this story is to be sure to give your bud the time necessary to allow it to dry and cure properly. The time invested will pay handsome dividends in the final product.

Choosing a suitable room or space

Your drying room environment is critical to success. Your dry room should meet the following criteria:

• A closed space that’s light-tight, has adequate ventilation, and is constructed of a material that doesn’t hold moisture. For example, cinder block is a poor choice, because it soaks up moisture, unless it’s sealed.

  During the dry cycle, allow as little light as possible into the room. Some people use a green headlight so they can work in relative darkness inside the room but still see what they’re doing.

• Temperature controlled — heat or air conditioning along with a thermostat to maintain a consistent temperature.
• Be equipped with thermometers and hygrometers distributed around the room to check for hot spots, cold spots, and areas that are too damp or dry.

• Be equipped with small fans to circulate the air in the room. Think gentle breeze, not gale force wind. Fans serve three purposes: 1) they ensure equilibrium across the room, so all flower dries at the same rate, 2) along with temperature and humidity control, they help to prevent mold and mildew, and 3) they expedite the drying process.

  In a square room, place a fan in each corner and face each fan at an angle to the wall that’s slightly less than 45 degrees, so all the fans are blowing clockwise or counterclockwise. This creates a vortex that ensures circulation throughout the entire room.

Clean and sterilize all equipment before bringing it into the room. Wiping everything down with a solution of one part bleach and three parts water does the trick.

Some companies including Autocure (autocure.us) in San Diego can fabricate a dry room to your specifications. They can build in airflow like that used in wind chambers for testing airplanes and cars but with a gentler breeze.

Sterilizing the room

After setting up your room and before bringing any bud into it, run an ozone or hydroxyl generator in the closed room:

• Ozone generator: An ozone generator is more effective and requires only two hours to sterilize all surfaces in a room. However, it’s more dangerous. Also, ozone has a strange smell that may be unpleasant.

  Evacuate the building (all people and pets) before running the ozone generator. Ozone damages mucosal tissue, including tissue in nasal passages and lungs. People aren’t safe simply being in another room. They need to be out of the building and wait for the ozone to dissipate before re-entering the building.

• Hydroxyl generator: A hydroxyl generator requires at least 48 hours to sterilize a room, but it’s safe, even if people are in different rooms in the building.

Don’t run the generator in the room when your plants are in it. The gasses may degrade the various chemical compounds in plants. Plants may be left in the building, but in a different room.

After turning off the generator and waiting a couple hours for the room to air out, you can bring in your plants and start to fine-tune the temperature and humidity.

Setting the temperature

Set and maintain a temperature in the room of 65 degrees Fahrenheit, and never let it get any higher than 68 degrees. Check the thermometers throughout the room and make sure all areas are a uniform temperature. If you have warm spots or cold spots, you may need to adjust your fans or add one or more fans.

If the temperature is any higher than 65, terpenes start to evaporate at a faster rate, and once you lose them, they’re gone. Myrcene, the fruity mango terpene, is the most volatile and is lost at 68 degrees with Limonene following at 70 degrees.

Too cold isn’t ideal either. Certain molds thrive in cool, damp environments. Also, everything takes longer to dry in a cooler room. A setting of 65 degrees is low enough to prevent terpene evaporation and high enough for faster production drying.

Controlling the humidity

Relative humidity dictates the quality, consistency, and pliability of final product. Maintain humidity in a range of 50–65 percent and check humidity regularly with your hygrometer.

Controlling your room for humidity can be a constant battle, especially if you’re in a high humidity location. Use a humidifier and/or dehumidifier if necessary.

High humidity is bad because it results in longer than necessary dry time and, more importantly, promotes mold and mildew. The last thing you want on that bud you spent so much time and effort growing is fungus!

Lower than 50 percent humidity isn’t favorable either. While it allows for quicker drying, you end up with buds that are crusty on the outside but mushy inside. Remember, you want moisture distributed evenly throughout the bud.

Fluffing your buds… or not

If you’re a home grower, hanging whole branches and stems, fluffing your buds (turning them over) isn’t necessary, because they’re not sitting on trays. If you’re a commercial grower, drying your buds on trays, fluffing is necessary to ensure that the buds dry evenly and don’t get flat spots.

Fluff every bud every day. You can flip them over individually using your hand or tongs or place an empty tray upside-down over a full tray, flip both trays over, and remove the top tray — like flipping a cake from a cake pan onto a plate. After fluffing the buds, make sure they’re evenly spaced on the tray; you don’t want them overlapping or touching. Also, rotate the racks, moving those from the periphery of the room toward the middle of the room and vice versa.

Deciding when your buds are dry enough

The best way to tell whether your buds are dry enough for curing is by performing the old-school stem test. Take an average size bud and bend the stem. If the stem snaps on several buds on different tray racks, the buds are sufficiently dry. If the stems bend over without breaking, more drying time is needed.

Not every stem on every bud in the room needs to snap, but if several average sized buds from all over the room snap, then you have an indicator that the total room drying is done. Now you’re ready to cure.

Curing dried cannabis

Curing is any process used to preserve and sometimes add flavor to consumable products. It’s generally done by adding a preservative, such as salt, nitrates, nitrites, vinegar, or sugar; removing water; or cooking or smoking (as in the case of smoked fish). Regardless of the process, the goal is to make the product inhospitable to microbes that would otherwise cause it to spoil. The same is true for cannabis — proper curing results in a consistent, shelf-stable bud with a flavorful terpene profile.

The curing process requires minimal moisture. You don’t necessarily want to remove more moisture from your bud; some moisture is required to enable healthy chemical and biological processes to continue during the cure cycle. Sugars and chlorophyll are still being broken down over the course of the cure process, thus improving the quality of your bud. Air circulation is also important. Although you cure buds in airtight containers, the containers need to be burped regularly to allow gases that are harmful to the curing process (such as ethylene) to escape and allow oxygen in — to prevent anaerobic (non-oxygen-breathing) microbes from ruining the bud. For the same reason, buds need to be fluffed as they cure.

Start by loading your buds loosely into a hermetically sealed (airtight) container, such as a mason jar, Tupperware container, or a five-gallon bucket with an airtight lid. Leave enough room to fluff the buds. Seal the container with the lid. Now, the buds are ready to be cured.

The cure process takes anywhere from three to eight weeks depending on the mass and density of the bud and the amount of moisture remaining in the buds after drying. Over the course of the cure, your involvement varies, as explained in the following sections.

During the first week

The first week of the cure is the most critical, because the risk of mold is highest. During this time, take the following steps every day:

1. Burp the container and fluff the buds.

   Burping consists of opening the lid of the container for a few minutes to allow bad gases out and fresh air in. Fluffing consists of gently hand mixing the buds, so they shift places.

2. As you burp and fluff the bud, check whether they’re all sticking together, which may be a sign they’re too wet.

   Condensation on the inside surfaces of the container may also indicate that the buds are too wet. If no buds are sticking together or they sound like gravel rolling around in the container, they may be too dry.

3. Gently squeeze and release several buds.

   If the buds bounce back like a dry sponge, they’re doing great. If they feel squishy, they’re probably too wet. If the buds are crunchy, they’re probably too dry.

4. Take a whiff inside the container.

   If it smells like bread, which means that yeast is growing, or smells like a damp basement, indicating mold or mildew, the buds are too moist.

5. Proceed as follows, based on conclusions drawn from your observations:
   • Acceptable moisture: Seal the container and repeat these steps daily for the first week.
   • Too moist: Depending on how excessive the moisture is, burping and fluffing more often and/or leaving the lid off the container for 20 minutes if just a little too moist to 20 hours for a bit more may be sufficient. If the moisture is more excessive, you may have to go back to the previous section and continue drying the bud.
   • Too dry: Depending on how dry the buds are, burping less often (every second or third day) may be sufficient, but continue to fluff the buds daily. You can also add a moisture pack, such as Boveda, to the container. However, moisture packs add to the cost and may add too much moisture.

Stick a note on the outside of the container that includes the time and day of the last burp and fluff and the condition of the product. You may also want to include instructions on how to proceed, such as “Burp & fluff on Friday.” Also keep a log of when you started the cure, so you know how long the product has been curing.

Don’t leave your buckets unattended. Daily fluffing and inspection is essential for at least one week.

After the first week

After the first week, burp, fluff, and inspect once a week for four to six weeks. Your buds still require oxygen to fend off the anaerobic microbes and fuel essential chemical processes, and you still need to release any harmful gasses. Continue to keep notes recording your inspection observations, the activities you performed, and instructions on how to proceed.

After these five or six weeks, assuming your buds are sufficiently dry, they’re ready for trimming. If you already trimmed your buds wet, you may want to do a second, finishing trimming to prepare them for storage.

Trimming bud

Trimming bud consists of snipping off all or most of the sugar leaves that stick out from the bud and shaping the bud to make it look more uniform and compact (see Figure 12-1). You want a nice, tight bud, not something that looks scraggly, but you also don’t want to remove too many trichomes.

© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

FIGURE 12-1: Trim your buds.

Grab a small pair of sharp scissors and follow these steps:

1. Snip off any stem that extends from the base of the bud.
2. Snip off the crow’s feet of small leaves at the base of the bud.

3. Snip off the less resinous portions of sugar leaves that stick out from the bud.

   Some trimmers prefer to remove the entire portion of the sugar leaf that protrudes from the bud, while others prefer to remove only the less resinous portions of the leaves.

Wear safety goggles, a long-sleeve shirt, and rubber gloves when trimming, especially if you’re sensitive to trichomes. Sterilize all equipment with isopropyl alcohol before and after use, between working with different strains to prevent contamination, and at the end of the day.

Storing your buds

To store buds, you may keep them in the storage containers you used to cure them or transfer them to other clean, sanitized airtight storage containers. Airtight is key. You also want to store your buds in a cool, dark place.

For long-term storage (more than a couple months) or commercial storage or packaging, vacuum seal your buds or pack them with an inert gas, such as nitrogen. If you’re a home grower, you can use a device for vacuum-sealing mason jars or for vacuum-sealing food items in plastic bags. You can use plastic bags for packing and storing clothing that allow you to use a standard vacuum cleaner to suck air from the bags prior to sealing them. Strongly consider using glass or stainless steel containers—plastic, may contain BPA or other harmful chemicals that can leach into your bud. If you’re a commercial grower, more sophisticated vacuum packaging equipment and supplies are available and necessary.

Packaging for commercial use

The variety of packaging options for selling bud commercially is mind blowing. All packaging needs to be opaque and child-resistant and hermetically sealed, but beyond that, a package can be a jar, a vial, or a pouch; glass, plastic, foil, or metal; vacuum packed or packed with an inert gas such as nitrogen. You can find plenty of vendors that specialize in cannabis packaging and packing equipment, such as vacuum chambers.

When choosing containers, consider the following:

• Containers must be airtight. Plastic pill containers aren’t suitable.
• A glass jar or vial is fine as long as the lid seals tight. It needs a lid with a rubber gasket or an O-ring or a similar seal. A loose-fitting lid is insufficient. Glass is usually used for the finest quality products.
• In many jurisdictions, packaging must obscure the product, which is fine because it keeps the light out, too. Even opaque packaging may benefit from having ultraviolet (UV) protection.
• If you’re using sealable bags, consider vacuuming out the air or filling the bags with nitrogen to replace the oxygen.
• Some plastics contain BPA or other potentially harmful chemicals that can off-gas and get into the bud, which poses a health risk along with degrading the aroma or flavor of the flower.

Follow all weighing, packaging, and labeling rules in the jurisdiction in which you operate to remain in compliance. For example, in some locations, dispensaries are permitted to sell only pre-packaged cannabis; they’re prohibited from weighing and packaging it themselves. Clear packaging, which enables you to see the bud inside, may also be prohibited.

When packaging, follow these precautions:

• Be sure the bud has been properly cured prior to packaging. Otherwise, your product is at a higher risk of developing mold. See the earlier section “Curing your bud” for details.
• Make sure the package is clean, sterilized, and dry before you weigh and insert your cannabis product.