Bud washing,any tips?

Indi

Active member
I was watching some wash buds by using 3 5 gallon buckets of water.
Room temperature and one bucket had 1/2 cup of lemon juice and 1/2 cup of baking soda.
The other buckets are plain water.
Many claim to dip buds in mixture of juice and baking soda then lightly swish then repeat in each bucket to rinse.
I also read to use H2O2 on second bucket before final rinse .
I expect a few tiny bugs caught in trichomes and some dust.
I’ve never tried washing buds and some claim it really helps improve quality and wash even indoor harvests.
Do I wash right after harvest or can I wait a day?
Any tips?
 
I was watching some wash buds by using 3 5 gallon buckets of water.
Room temperature and one bucket had 1/2 cup of lemon juice and 1/2 cup of baking soda.
The other buckets are plain water.
Many claim to dip buds in mixture of juice and baking soda then lightly swish then repeat in each bucket to rinse.
I also read to use H2O2 on second bucket before final rinse .
I expect a few tiny bugs caught in trichomes and some dust.
I’ve never tried washing buds and some claim it really helps improve quality and wash even indoor harvests.
Do I wash right after harvest or can I wait a day?
Any tips?

I guess my first question is why? I use lemon juice and baking soda to clean my oven- it is a powerful degreaser. I use baking soda alone in my fridge and on my carpet to neutralize smells. These products may strip valuable oils from your plant and having used baking soda before, it has left my plants looking lifeless, without odor and flavor which is something I want in my finished product. If these methods are being used bc of PM at harvest, I would only consider in dire situations bc the product that remains after this process leaves less than desirable results often stripping valuable trichomes, etc. Even h2o2 baths after harvest can have a less than desirable impact. Another solution might be to turn your product into oil.

Shaka
Mu
 
I read a post on another forum recently that said he uses an H2O2 solution in a barrel, gives each branch a quick dip and swirl, then hangs the buds to dry. He said he's astounded at the amount of shit that ends up in the barrel. Must've been horrible last year (or whenever it was) when they had all the fires in NorCal and ash in the air.
 
What doesn’t make any sense is putting lemon juice and baking soda in the same solution because they react.
I got lucky and it rained day before chop so they were clean.

Some people swear by it and wash every grow even if indoors.

I tried a branch in 1/4 cup of lemon juice in 5 gallons of filtered water and the trichomes looked unharmed but it did loose aroma immediately.
In a few hours I couldn’t tell the difference in appearance or wetness compared to other even under scope but it did loose potency of aroma.
 
Hi guys

I have some recent experience with bud washing. I’ve got a fungus gnat colony in my garden (about done with them now) and they all were attracted to an autoflower over to one side. At harvest every single bud had several gnat carcasses glued to it.

I prepared 3 buckets, all with Luke warm tap water. Just water.
Vigorous swirling in the water was all it took to dislodge the carcasses.

I then hung to dry as normal and the bud turned out just right. Potent, smelly, tasty and smooth burning.

I’ve never had to do this for Pm or anything else so I have no input there... I guess my point is- don’t underestimate the power of water and persistence. :)
 
I tried a few branches and one thing I noticed was a much more even cure during hanging stage.
I didn’t see any trichomes on bottom of bucket but I swirled easy and some buds hit bottom and sides.
It didn’t get all the bugs trapped by trichomes.
I have seen articles on water curing but I haven’t read them.
 
Eureka! I felt the need to remoisten some of my bud to achieve that day-of-harvest flavour and I connected the method of steam hydrolysis, used for certain food products like meat, to cannabis. I tried curing in the low UV winter sun and freezing the flowers in jars in the freezer and found both those curing methods to be no good. The sun curing did seem to charge the trichomes up, but I believe it was the heat causing carboxylation or THCa into THC and Myrcene into Hashishene, as it now seems to be called.

Cannabis Hydrolysis as a cannabis flower cleaning method:

I placed a metal sieve over a pot of boiling water and placed some cannabis flowers into the sieve and let them sit in the steam for about 5-10 minutes.
Make sure the sieve is above the boiling water so your flowers don’t get soaked��
This is the ionic capabilities of steam at work.
It is believed that steam heat destroys pathogens like Botrytis cinerea. It seems to destroy the botrytis “sting” or stale dried-out flavour.
Steam heat also seems to remoisten the terpenes and phenolic compounds making them more aromatic and organoleptic.

Cannabis Hydrolysis is an experiment I tried this week and I must warn that I do not know first hand if steam degrades the THC/CBD/terpene/phenolic compounds. I do not own a gas chromatography computer so I can’t measure the effects of steam accurately.
What I can say is what a delight the smoke is after attempting this method of remoistening and pathogen cleansing the cannabis flower in steam heat.
Enjoy!
 
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It's something you do once or twice then blah, not worth effort or stress..stress comes from losing some after wash and rot some sour diesel tops.. yes wash your fruit and veg but your eating, not smoking them..
 
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