How to Harvest Cannabis
It’s extremely rewarding to harvest your own cannabis. Here’s how to optimize the harvesting process.
After months of waiting patiently, it’s now time to harvest your cannabis plant. Harvesting is the most exciting part of the growing process, but it’s essential to carry out the correct procedure so you can reap the most rewards.
The Equipment You Need
To successfully harvest your cannabis plant, you’ll need to get your equipment ready beforehand. It’s also good to know if you’re going to carry dry or wet trimming (explained below) to know what to have on hand. Here is some of the basic equipment needed:
Comfortable, old clothes
Sharp and ergonomic scissors
A clean surface top, like a table
Large shears
A comfortable chair and working area, preferably cool and free from dust and hair to limit contamination
A clean tray or bowl
You can also consider investing in higher-quality equipment, especially if you know you’re going to be harvesting cannabis a lot. While generally more expensive, quality equipment will last longer, be less tiring on your body, and can make the harvesting process easier and faster.
While harvesting, resin build-up is common. To combat this, you can wear comfortable gloves and have multiple pairs of scissors to swap out. Rubbing alcohol can also help remove resin.
The harvesting process can also be a lengthy and tiring one, so ensure your setup is ergonomic enough to allow for good posture, free arm movement, and plenty of space. You might even like to add in some non-visual entertainment to help pass the time, like audiobooks or podcasts.
Different Ways to Trim
Once you have all the correct equipment ready, it’s time to start chopping down your cannabis plant. Trimming occurs after the first step, chopping the plant down. You’ll need a large pair of shears to chop and to cut off the big branches directly at the base, right above the soil. However, it’s also essential to be extremely gentle with the buds, so handle with care!
Dry Trimming
The chopped cannabis plant is hung up to dry for several days before trimming. When dry trimming, make sure to cut branches that can act as “handles” to hang up when drying.
Wet Trimming
After chopping the plant, buds are trimmed immediately. An easy way to do this is by chopping off large branches first so you can hold each branch before snipping buds off as you go.
The Bottom Line
Harvesting your cannabis plant requires care and attention to keep the plant at optimum. However, when done correctly, it can be extremely rewarding.
Harvesting is just one step in preparing cannabis for consumption. After successfully harvesting, you can look forward to drying and curing your plant so you can reap the benefits.