How to Harvest Your Cannabis Plants – and What to Do Next

You’ve worked hard to bring your cannabis plants to life, likely starting off hoping your seeds will even germinate – or buying that adorable sapling from the dispensary. But now it’s grown big and strong, full of life, leaves, and beautiful buds. The time is right (or at least you think it is), but there’s one problem… You have no idea how to harvest your cannabis plants or what to do next.

If this is starting to sound all too familiar, this post was written for you. Keep reading to learn step-by-step how to harvest cannabis plants. We’ll cover everything you need to know, from how you can be sure the time is right to the equipment needed and best practices for trimming, drying, curing, and storing your hard-earned harvest.

How to Harvest Cannabis Plants Step-By-Step

When you hear words like harvest, you likely start thinking about giant plows going through farm fields harvesting vegetables. Harvesting your cannabis crop at home is easy when you’re armed with the right knowledge.

How You Know Cannabis Plants Are Ready to Harvest

If you’ve been watching your plants carefully and tracking their growth, then you’ll know about how long it’s been since they first flowered. While there is a general timeline from seed to flowering, it’s best to know the signs cannabis is ready to harvest, ensuring you don’t jump the gun and harvest your plants too soon.

Signs Your Cannabis Plants Are Ready for Harvest

• The leaves are yellowing, curling at the ends, or falling off.
• Buds appear fully developed and don’t seem to have grown in days.
• When the buds are about ready, they will be heavy, causing branches to hang or droop.
• Trichomes are possibly the best indicator – when they go from clear to milky white, it’s time.

Equipment Needed to Harvest Cannabis Plants

Growing cannabis at home can be a significant monetary investment the first time around, but the great thing is you’ll be able to use everything again and again. Along with your growing equipment, you’ll need specific items to aid in harvesting your crops.

While you will not have the same level of control over the growing conditions of your crop, growing outdoors in a natural garden is always an option as well.  For those that have the space to do so, the initial investment in required equipment is greatly lessened.

Necessary Equipment to Harvest Cannabis

• Quality pair of rubber or latex gloves
• Sharp and clean scissors or shears
• Something to place the cut plant material
• String/twine for hanging plants to dry or purpose-built drying racks

1. Prune Near the Base of the Plant

Once you’ve determined your buds are at prime harvesting time and gathered all your supplies, it’s time to get to it! There are many ways to go about harvesting cannabis. Some people will uproot the whole plant, though this isn’t ideal. Some people prefer to make trimming easier by removing only the buds and dead leaves, leaving relatively bare stalks that will grow new buds.

However, the most popular method, and the one that most growers will recommend, is to prune your plants near the base without damaging the root of the plant. This gives you more to work with when hanging your plants to dry out but also allows it to grow back from the base with healthy new stalks.

2. Trim Away Excess Foliage or Branches

Assuming you chose to follow the step of pruning at the base rather than pruning closer to the buds themselves, your next step is to trim away the excess. This is the foliage like leaves and small branches that may grow off the stalks that don’t contain buds.

What you want to have left when you’re done is the main part of the stalk and any branches with buds on them – without all the stuff surrounding the buds.

3. Hang Harvested Plants Upside Down to Dry

Once you’ve pruned and trimmed your harvest, your next step is to hang your plants upside down to dry. Depending on the environmental conditions, the drying process can take anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks.

Ideal conditions for drying cannabis is at 65-75°F (18-24°C), with a relative humidity that is steadily between 45-55%, in a dark space. The reason you want your plants hanging upside down is to allow the cannabinoids from the stalks to descend, creating a more potent final product.

4. Monitor Humidity When Drying Cannabis Plants

With cannabis plants maintaining humidity is necessary from seed to harvest and curing to long term storage. The reason for this is multifaceted – both preventing mold from growing when too moist or becoming brittle if too dry. This is especially important in the process of harvesting and curing your cannabis crops.

How to Know When Cannabis is Done Drying

The best way to know if your buds are ready to move from drying to curing is to use a hygrometer to test the humidity level of the buds themselves. Ideally, cannabis flowers should be in the 62-68% humidity range when you start the curing process. Anything above 70% increases the chances of mold developing.

After Harvesting Cannabis, Trim and Cure the Buds

Once you’ve tested the humidity of your drying cannabis plants and it’s come to that ideal range it’s time to move on to curing! This process takes almost as long as it did to grow the plants, if not longer. Here are some tips to ensure it goes smoothly!

Tips for Trimming Cannabis

If you’ve done a good job of the initial trimming before you hung your cannabis, it should be as easy as snipping each bud away from the stalk at the base. You may need smaller sheers to remove small leaves around the buds, but this isn’t necessary.

Best Practices for Curing Cannabis

Curing cannabis is a detailed process and deserves a post all its own – but a quick run down on best practices is to use mason jars for simplicity and cost effectiveness, have patience as the process can take up to two months, and be consistent with burping the jars (removing the lid for 10-15 minutes and resealing). The higher humidity of your buds, the more often you’ll want to burp the jars.

Use Proper Cannabis Storage Techniques to Extend Shelf Life

Once you’ve cured your buds for at least 4-6 weeks when under ideal conditions, you’re ready to enjoy the fruits of your labor! You may notice that you have way more than you initially expected to get from harvesting only a couple of plants. The good news is cannabis can be kept for months (long enough for you to start the process over again with your regrowing plants!) when stored properly.

Proper storage of cannabis is nearly the same as the ideal conditions for curing – moderate humidity, dark space, and an airtight container. If you’re in one of many states where you can grow and gift cannabis, that is also an option when finding yourself with yields surpassing your expectations. Either way, storing your bud properly, whether for yourself or as a gift, ensures that none of your hard work – growing, harvesting, or curing – will go to waste.