How To Deal With The Smell Of Flowering Marijuana Plants

One giveaway that you are growing marijuana indoors or outdoors is the aroma produced by flowering tops, especially the indica varieties with their signature “skunky” odor. Many people, of course, won’t recognize the smell or associate it with marijuana, but some will. The covering used in the urban garden for outside growing (mentioned on this page) will contain some of the smell, but you still have to lift the cover up to water the plants, so it’s best to do that in the afternoon, when breezes are stronger and will dissipate the odor rapidly. You can also use cedar shavings, not bark, for mulch in your entire garden. Cedar can somewhat disguise the smell of flowering tops, but not entirely. If you are worried about the odor of your outdoor plants, ask your seed supplier for less-smelly varieties, especially the smaller indica-sativa hybrids.

Generally speaking, indica varieties are smaller and more compact, thus easier to conceal than the nonskunky sativas, which tend to grow very large. But many indicas have the skunky aroma, so you have a bit of a quandary here. More information about choosing varieties is covered on my website.

If some of your marijuana plants become really smelly as the flowering tops mature, some may have to be sacrificed by harvesting them earlier than desired. All growers or farmers of any kind of plant occasionally have to make such decisions—it’s simply a part of agriculture.

If you are growing marijuana indoors and a dinner guest asks if you have a pet skunk, you know you have a serious problem. Are you venting your grow room properly? Probably not. You can also buy devices to reduce indoor odors, such as deodorizers, ozone and ion generators, and activated charcoal filters, but your venting system should be your first line of defense. All of this is discussed in more detail on my website, but you should have odors in mind before you begin, because they are definitely a security issue.

How To Grow Marijuana In A Greenhouse During The Winter

I’ve maintained a small greenhouse for most of my adult life—a necessity because I’m a food and garden writer who’s constantly experimenting with new plants other than marijuana. I need to germinate chile and tomato seeds in the spring. I also love tropical and subtropical plants like bananas, hibiscus, mangos, and Meyer lemons, so I need a greenhouse to winter them over. But a winter greenhouse is not the ideal place to grow marijuana. Winter light is not the best light for growing marijuana. Not only are the days shorter, which provides less total light for the plant, but also the intensity of light in the northern hemisphere is greatly reduced because of the low angle of the sun. Some sources indicate that winter light intensity is often less than one-tenth of that of typical summer daylight, which greatly inhibits plant growth because it reduces photosynthesis. In simple terms, plants that require intense light cannot produce enough food for themselves during the low light of winter, causing leaf yellowing and dropping. Essentially they are dropping inefficient leaves and making new ones closer to the light source at the top of plants.

And the leaves are usually narrower and more delicate, further reducing their effectiveness and causing the plants to become “leggy.” Growing marijuana in a greenhouse like this one—where Mario Dadomo grows chile peppers at the Azienda Agraria Sperimentale Stuard in Parma, Italy—would be overkill for a medical marijuana operation. But one can always fantasize.

Marijuana is demanding of full sunlight, and if it doesn’t get it, its quality diminishes. A high level of THC requires intense light, and the low light in a winter greenhouse will make a high level difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. In other words, the potency of marijuana grown under winter low-light conditions is significantly reduced. Adding lights to correct this requires a waterproof greenhouse roof. In addition, insect pests are always a problem in the winter greenhouse.

Some growers attempt to use a sunroom for marijuana cultivation, but I don’t think that they’re efficient at all. In the summer, the sun is too high in the sky, so the angle is wrong for most sunrooms and the plants will receive diffused light rather than direct light. In winter, the sun is lower, so the plants will receive direct light, but it’s not strong enough for proper growth, just as in the greenhouse. I say forget about using a greenhouse or sunroom and simply grow the plants under HID lamps. More about marijuana in greenhouses during the winter here.

Best Way Of Storing Your Cannabis

 During his first season, Drako reported that he grew six primary varieties and three experimental varieties. He had a total of sixteen plants that came and went (never more than twelve at one time), and the total dry weight of flowering tops (not including trim) came to 1.5 pounds.

“I grew too much,” he confided to me. “Now I’m violating the state medical marijuana statute for

possession of what I grew. And I’m not allowed to sell it or give it away. So I have to throw some of it away, or hide it.” Drako estimated that his larder would last him two years because he smokes an average of one ounce per month to help with his back pain. In the end, he couldn’t bear to throw it away, so he stored it.

The THC in the cured tops naturally degrades into CBD, which is nonpsychoactivecannabidiol. That

process is aggravated by the two biggest enemies of cured marijuana: light and heat. Ideally, if I were a grower and could choose the best preservation method for marijuana, I would vacuum-seal the totally cured tops and then irradiate them with the same process used for food. This would kill all bacteria and mold spores. Next, I would place them in a light-impervious container, and store it in the back of the refrigerator. But, unfortunately, home irradiators are not yet available to consumers. However, if you omit the irradiation, this method still works very well. Refrigeration retards the breakdown of THC, but whatever container you use must be airtight. You can freeze the seeds but not the tops.

In addition to light and heat, another enemy of cured marijuana is dryness—poorly stored tops dry out, lose potency, and fall apart. There are commercial storage containers available, like Tightpac and Tightvac from the same company, and CannaFresh jars that come in various sizes. But some of these containers are plastic, which most growers don’t like because it leaches and imparts a chemical odor to the marijuana. The real drawback with polyurethane containers, and especially thin plastic bags, is not the supposed chemical odor, but rather the fact that they are porous to air and may cause the tops to dry out. In the refrigerator, with a humidity of about 65 percent, the bags are also porous to water vapor, so your tops may rehydrate, making

themunsmokable.

Some storage containers are transparent because they are used to display tops in a dispensary setting, thus admitting THC-destroying light. Some of these are made of glass and could easily break if dropped. And some are quite expensive, so you could also shop secondhand stores in order to find inexpensive, opaque ceramic cannabis canisters for both curing and storage. Drako packs the canisters so the tops don’t rub against each other and lose dried trichomes, but he doesn’t pack them so tightly that they are crushed. These canisters are airtight, very difficult to break, and store easily in the refrigerator. I use the same ones for storing coffee

beans.

You have learned how to harvest your tops, break them down into a manageable size, dry them, and cure them, so you now should have enough marijuana to ease whatever medical conditions you are growing it for— assuming, of course, that you have not run into any pests or problems that would jeopardize your crop. But if you do run into problems, this website will help you out.

Best Way Of Curing the Tops Of Your Marijuana Plant

If drying is merely a physical process, then curing is an art—much like cooking and gardening are at times. Curing marijuana is essentially the fine-tuning of temperature and humidity to degrade the chlorophyll—the “green” flavor stoners despise—and transform it into carotene and xanthophylls, which are more pleasant to taste. If this is sounding vaguely familiar, think of fall foliage—it’s the same process, only controlled and regulated by the grower, not nature.

Besides the chlorophyll contained in the flowering tops, there are other chemicals that change as well. In lay language, the fruits (yes, the tops are fruits because they usually contain seeds) are still ripening, and as long as you don’t dry them out too quickly and leave unprocessed chlorophyll in them, the green flavor will vanish over time—the process can last two months or more for “advanced curing.” Note how similar in shape hops flowers are to trimmed marijuana tops. Brewers don’t want chlorophyll in their beer, so they only use the hops flowers.

Here are the steps to cure the nugget-size tops you have dried:

-Select a curing container. It should be opaque because ultraviolet light can degrade the tops and bleach them. I recommend the ceramic canisters used to store coffee beans. They have a hinged lid with a clamp and rubber seal that works perfectly to retain some moisture inside.

-Place the dried tops from your screens loosely in the canisters. Do not pack them in the canisters.

Over a few weeks, the small amount of moisture left in the tops will help cure them by transforming the

chlorophyll.

-Open each canister every day to admit fresh oxygen and check for any signs of mold on the tops.

Once a week, remove a small top and smoke some marijuana to check for flavor and smoothness. When the flavor is not “green” and the smoke is not so harsh that it makes you cough, the curing process is complete. For more information about curing marijuana click here.