16-day dry
Jeremy's benchmark drying duration — two weeks is acceptable, 16 days is the goal, and longer is fine as long as humidity holds.
He repeats the 16-day figure alongside 60°F / 60% RH as the three-point basic parameter set.
ep 040
✂️ Harvest & Cure
Harvest planning, drying, curing, final weights, storage
70 terms
A buds
The top-tier buds from a plant — the big, fully formed colas from the canopy that get the most trim attention and go into smoke flower.
Jeremy says on harvest day he focuses trim effort on all the A's, the big buds he likes for smoking.
ep 037
amber trichome
An over-ripe trichome head that has turned golden/amber as cannabinoids degrade, associated with heavier couch-lock sedating effect.
Jeremy's steak metaphor makes amber the well-done end. Some growers use 30% amber as their trigger; Jeremy prefers just a little amber mixed with mostly cloudy.
ep 037
annual flowering plant
A plant that lives only one season/year, completing its lifecycle (germination through seed production) within that window and then dying.
Jeremy uses this to explain why cannabis naturally senesces — it's programmed to produce seed and die within a single year, even indoors under 12/12.
ep 037
Bolting
When a leafy or cool-season crop flowers prematurely, triggered by heat or maturity, usually making leaves bitter.
Jeremy notes the claytonia in quadrant 4 is starting to bolt — it's a cold-season crop being grown in the warm tent — and also warns salad mix may start to bolt after several cut-and-come-again harvests.
ep 006, ep 025
bract
The small resin-covered leaf tip that forms around calyxes on cannabis buds; rich in trichomes but always shows more amber than the actual nug.
Jeremy's big gotcha: if you only scope bracts you'll harvest too early because they always read more advanced than the nug itself.
ep 037
branch hang
The standard method of hanging individual branches on hangers, fishing line, or twine in the drying space. Jeremy uses regular clothing-style hangers that he wipes clean between runs.
He shows them in-tent and notes there are many ways to do this — a hanger, fishing line, twine — the key is making a hooking point.
ep 040
Bucking
Removing finished nugs from the stock after trim — the final step before jarring, usually done with scissors.
In Jeremy's workflow, one person holds with minimal interaction and brushes everything off, a second person bucks the nugs off the stock with scissors, so the flower is never squeezed.
ep 041
burping
Opening a sealed curing jar to release excess moisture when the herb was put away too wet. Jeremy views it as a symptom of a failed dry, not a goal.
He explicitly frames the no-burp philosophy — a properly slow-dried jar should not need burping, and burping to chase out moisture is what creates the hay smell.
ep 040
Cannabrush (trim brush)
A brush designed for dry trimming cannabis — held against the bud, it knocks fan leaves and crow's feet off at the perfect resistance and grippiness without requiring scissor cuts.
Jeremy calls it the biggest game-changer in trimming he has ever come across. He discovered it at the Emerald Cup and bought one immediately despite the basting-brush appearance. He has to call it trim brush because the word canna gets flagged by payment processors.
ep 041
chlorophyll breakdown
The post-harvest biological process by which chlorophyll and other leaf compounds degrade in a dying plant — faster at warm temperatures, which is why cool drying is preferred.
Jeremy uses it to explain why 60°F matters — it keeps chlorophyll and chemical breakdown processes from activating too quickly.
ep 040
clear trichome
An immature trichome head that is still transparent, indicating the bud is too young to harvest.
Jeremy says clear is 'too young' and compares it to a rare steak in his ripeness metaphor.
ep 037
cloudy trichome
A mature trichome head that has turned milky white, indicating peak cannabinoid content and the ideal harvest window for most flower.
Jeremy calls cloudy 'great' and compares it to a medium steak. He wants mostly cloudy with a little amber as his personal target.
ep 037
couch lock
The heavy sedating body-focused effect associated with very mature cannabis flower (lots of amber trichomes), often sought for sleep.
Jeremy says if you want full couch lock for sleep, go fully well-done amber.
ep 037
Crow's feet
The small sugar-leaf projections that stick out from the sides of the flower — you can usually break them off at the edge without having to scissor-cut them.
Jeremy says if the d-leafing is done right you can actually break off some of the crow's feet just by slapping the edge of the leaf with the brush.
ep 041
cure
The post-dry jar phase where moisture inside the buds redistributes wall-to-wall and aromas integrate. Jeremy considers curing largely optional if the slow dry was done right.
He likens it to opening a bottle of wine — a slight mellowing, not a transformative process, and not the multi-month ritual beginners are told to expect.
ep 040
Cut-and-come-again harvesting
Harvesting salad greens by cutting young leaves and letting the plant regrow multiple times from the same planting.
Jeremy contrasts this against whole-head lettuce harvest, noting salad mix can typically be cut 3 to 5 times before regrowth slows, flavour changes, and the plants start wanting to bolt.
ep 006
D-leafing
Removing the large fan leaves from harvested branches before trim so that only the manicured sugar leaves and crow's feet remain to deal with.
Jeremy d-leafs the big ones because fan leaves have no frost and he does not want them in his trim bin. He stacks d-leafed branches in a queue before running them through the trim brush.
ep 041
defoliation (harvest day)
The practice of stripping fan leaves from plants at or just before harvest to streamline the wet trim workflow and keep the trim bin clean.
Jeremy describes staging defoliation — even doing it a couple days pre-harvest if labour is tight — stripping plants down to just buds and sugar leaves.
ep 037
DJ Short drying method
A legacy drying method attributed to breeder DJ Short that uses paper bags — you roll the top of the bag down and check each day to make sure colas are not moist.
Jeremy references this as a googleable alternative but says he prefers the hang-then-tub flow because paper bags cause too much movement and touching.
ep 040
dry room
A dedicated room or space where harvested whole plants or branches hang to dry slowly under controlled temperature and humidity.
Jeremy says he only has one dry room, which is his key logistical constraint forcing a whole-room harvest. Running sequential harvests through one dry room causes rehydrate-dry cycles that mess up the drying.
ep 037
dry trim
Trimming the flower after it has been dried — the BuildASoil preferred method because it protects terpenes and gives a slower, controlled dry.
The contrast to wet trim — Jeremy's approach for the 10x10 harvest.
ep 040
Fade
The visible finishing of a plant late in flower, where leaves change color as the plant pulls mobile nutrients. To Jeremy, fade means the plant is finishing and is what produces good smoke when smoking right away.
Jeremy says less chlorophyll means better smoke quality straight out of the jar. He distinguishes real healthy fade (plant finishing on its own) from induced starvation fade (where you're starving the plant and calling it fade).
ep 005, ep 028, ep 031, ep 035, ep 037
fan leaf
The large primary cannabis leaves (5-9 fingers) that do most of the photosynthesis but carry little to no resin.
Jeremy leaves most fan leaves on during hang drying in dry Colorado climate, but removes the no-sugar fan leaves on harvest day to start the drying process cleanly.
ep 037
finish window
The span of weeks during which a given cannabis cultivar is biologically ready to be harvested, typically 8-12 weeks in flower for high-quality genetics.
Jeremy says 8 weeks is his practical minimum, best genetics go 8-12+ weeks, and he doesn't bother with cultivars claiming 4-5 week finishes.
ep 037
Flushing
Stopping nutrient input (and in hydro, running plain water) at the end of a grow with the goal of removing residual nutrients from the plant. Jeremy says this concept does not apply to living organic soil and is based on a misunderstanding of how plants use nutrients.
Jeremy says flushing doesn't apply to living soil. Because living soil's nutrients are held in organic form and released by microbes, you simply stop adding new water-soluble inputs and the system self-regulates. Forcing a flush in living soil is unnecessary and confuses the plant.
ep 005, ep 033, ep 037
freeze dryer
A piece of equipment that sublimates water out of frozen plant material at low temperature, preserving terpenes and colour for hash production.
Jeremy references freeze dryers as the downstream processing step after fresh-frozen harvest. Keeps the product as cold as possible the whole way to preserve volatile terpenoids.
ep 037
fresh frozen
A harvest technique where cut flower goes straight into a deep freezer the day of harvest instead of being dried, preserving volatile terpenes for later hash/rosin processing.
Jeremy says if the whole room was destined for rosin he'd pull fresh frozen. It usually means pulling earlier than you would for smoke flower — you want full head trichomes with minimal amber degradation.
ep 037
Grease factor / gluey texture
A descriptor for high-resin bud that squeezes and oozes rather than crunches — a sign of heavy trichome production and wet-sticky density.
Jeremy uses this as a quality marker on Halitosis #2, noting the flower wants to ooze and grease rather than crunch when you squeeze it.
ep 041
Greens harvester
A simple tool that uses a cordless drill and a small blade to mechanically cut a lettuce bed in one pass, allowing one person to harvest a whole 30-gallon container.
Jeremy demonstrates it in the greenhouse — after harvesting the crew also manually went back and thinned the bed to keep regrowth clean.
ep 010
hash
A solventless cannabis concentrate made from trichomes separated from the plant material, usually via ice water/bubble or dry sift methods.
Jeremy plans to push most of the Halitosis into hash because there's more yield than he can smoke. Hash-makers often pull earlier (before full amber) for a lighter-coloured product with more preserved terps.
ep 037
hay smell / hay odor
A stale, grassy, hay-like aroma that develops when cannabis has been dried or cured improperly — usually the result of jarring too wet and then burping off moisture.
Jeremy cites this as the signature failure mode of rushing the dry or trying to fix a too-wet jar by burping.
ep 040
Head stash
Flower a grower keeps for personal smoke rather than selling — usually the best quality bud from a run, set aside in jars.
Jeremy says the goal of Season One was to fill up a whole bunch of jars for head stash, which he achieved alongside the pheno hunt.
ep 041
indirect airflow
Pointing a drying-room fan at a back wall or off-axis — never directly at the plants — to keep air moving without the direct drying effect that would blast moisture out of a single nug.
Jeremy stresses this as the correct fan placement in a drying tent. Direct air on the tallest hanging plants is what causes uneven drying.
ep 040
jar RH window 58-63%
The preferred in-jar humidity range for finished product — some growers like it drier at 58%, others wetter at 63%. Jeremy targets the middle and likes it ready-to-burn.
He presents this as a personal-preference range but holds the dry-room target constant regardless of jar preference.
ep 040
Lettuce thinning after harvest
Pulling extra lettuce plants out of a dense bed after harvest so the remaining plants have room to regrow cleanly.
Jeremy thins the quadrant four lettuce with scissors, cutting slightly higher than ideal so decay stays in the bed and regrowth is easy to wash.
ep 010
long-cure myth
The common beginner belief that curing for 6 months or a year will always improve the herb. Jeremy rejects this — most herbs peak within a 6-month window and many get worse with age.
He says leftover jars past 6 months to a year are usually either not his favorites or leftovers from abundance.
ep 040
Mobile nutrients
Nutrients a plant can translocate internally, moving them from older parts of the plant to newer growth (or out of leaves into buds) during starvation or finishing. When hydro growers flush, the plant decays itself by pulling these internally.
Jeremy explains that fade colour change is caused by the plant digesting its mobile nutrients once it stops taking up new ones.
ep 005, ep 037
New white pistils rule
Rule of thumb for harvest timing — do not harvest while new white pistils are still emerging from bud sites, even if you've hit your target calendar date.
Jeremy's rule of thumb for brand-new growers: go longer than expected if plant health allows it.
ep 033
Pheno hunt
Running multiple seeds of the same cross through a full grow so you can sniff, smoke, and weigh each one and pick the best-expressing plant as a mother for future cloned runs.
Jeremy frames the entire 10x10 Season One as a pheno hunt — not a yield-max run — where quality and head-stash jars were the goal and identifying keeper moms was the exit condition.
ep 041
potato chip crunch
The specific auditory signature Jeremy listens for during the stem snap test — a crisp crunch like breaking a potato chip, indicating the stem has dried enough, without needing to fully snap in half.
Used as the mental model for new growers who hear 'stem snap' and expect a full clean break. Jeremy clarifies this is not required.
ep 040
Quality first trim workflow
A home-grower trim approach that prioritizes minimal handling and gentle interaction over speed or golf-ball appearance — protects trichome structure and preserves aroma.
Jeremy describes this as the alternative to vacuum-packed, golf-balled, overworked nugs that feel mistreated. He deliberately leaves a little leaf structure on so you can knock it off later and revive the aroma.
ep 041
ripen top-down / bottom-up
Observation that some plants finish by ripening the top colas first, while other cultivars mature from the bottom of the plant up toward the top.
Jeremy mentions 'sometimes you'll harvest the top first some plants ripen from the bottom up i swear it's really weird' as a harvest-stage behavior to watch for.
ep 035
rosin
A solventless cannabis concentrate made by pressing hash or flower between heated plates, typically fed by fresh frozen or high-quality trim.
Jeremy mentions rosin as his downstream use for B-buds and lower material — lower-quality buds get pushed into the rosin pile instead of smoking-grade flower.
ep 037
Scissor hash
The sticky resin that builds up on trim tools during dry trim — a by-product of handling the flower that can be scraped off and used.
Jeremy notes the Cannabrush bristles collect literally perfect scissor hash that you can pop right off the tips, and it keeps your hands much cleaner than normal trimming.
ep 041
slow dry
A drying method that extends the drying period as long as possible — roughly 14-16 days — by holding a stable humidity around 60% RH and cool temperature around 60°F, so terpenes and aromas are preserved and no hay smell develops.
Jeremy's core thesis for the entire episode. He repeats that the slow dry is 'the most important part' of the whole grow and that without it good genetics will smell like hay.
ep 040
smoke test
The final subjective evaluation of dried, cured flower by smoking it — the real measure of a cultivar's quality after visual and aroma checks.
Jeremy says deciding his 10x10 winner is going to come down to the smoke test after drying and curing is done.
ep 037
stasis storage
Holding dried but untrimmed herb in a controlled 60% RH environment indefinitely until there is time to trim — Jeremy says the quality is locked in and the dry room can double as storage.
He tells big-farm and busy home growers they can leave branches hanging or tubbed in a good environment for weeks and still have great flower when they finally trim.
ep 040
stem snap test
A field test for drying doneness where you bend a branch and listen for a clean potato-chip crunch rather than a rubbery bend or leaf-only crumple. Small thin branches crunch first; the main branch crunch is the true indicator.
Jeremy demonstrates this live on day 12 across multiple branches, distinguishing the sound of leaf crumple from the actual stem crunch, and clarifies that it does not need to break in half.
ep 040
sugar leaf
The small resin-coated leaves growing out of cannabis buds, distinguished from fan leaves by their trichome coverage.
Jeremy's defoliation rule: fan leaves without sugar go to compost, sugar leaves with resin stay on the plant to feed the trim bin for hash.
ep 037
target RH 60%
The humidity setpoint Jeremy uses throughout the drying period — 60% RH is high enough to slow the dry without encouraging mold, low enough to keep bud rot risk manageable.
He says to lean toward 59 over 61 because day-one humidity is always highest and it only drops from there.
ep 040
target temperature 60°F
Jeremy's ideal dry room temperature — cool enough to slow chlorophyll breakdown and preserve volatile terpenes without being so cold it stops the drying process.
He explains biology is less active at cooler temperatures, same principle as living soil.
ep 040
terpene percentage
Lab-measured concentration of terpenes in finished cannabis, commonly referenced in rosin production.
Jeremy cites 1-2% as the usual 'hydro nutrient' marketing bump versus 5-10% that he claims to see from living-soil rosin tests.
ep 008
terpenes
Volatile aromatic compounds in cannabis responsible for odor, flavor and contribution to effect. Slow drying at cool temperatures is how Jeremy preserves them.
He frames the entire dry and cure protocol around terpene preservation and the culinary experience of smoking.
ep 040
Throat coat / flavor translation
When the aroma of a flower translates into taste on the smoke and coats your throat with the same notes — Jeremy's personal quality benchmark.
Jeremy calls this the trifecta — it cannot just smell good, it has to taste like it smells or have a good translation, and the frontrunners he picked all pass this test.
ep 041
trichome
The resin gland on cannabis flowers and sugar leaves whose head colour (clear, cloudy, amber) indicates ripeness.
Jeremy uses a USB scope to classify trichomes across clear/cloudy/amber ratios. Ripeness is judged by the relative percentage of each.
ep 037
Trichome check
Using a magnifier (loupe or USB microscope) to assess trichome maturity — clear vs cloudy vs amber — as the primary harvest-timing indicator.
Jeremy says he'll use a USB microscope for screenshots and mentions trichome check is a preference-driven call.
ep 033
trim bin
The container that catches resin-rich trim (sugar leaves and small bracts) during wet or dry trimming, later used for hash or edible production.
Jeremy is protective of trim bin quality — he wants only sugar-leaf and resin-bearing material in it so that the downstream hash is good, not full of plain leafy fan-leaf material.
ep 037
trim nug
A bud whose structure requires almost no sugar-leaf trimming — you pop one fan leaf off and it's ready to cure.
Jeremy loves this about Halitosis: 'i basically pop a leaf off trim one leaf and it's it's trim nug i mean it's going to be almost no work in there.'
ep 035
Trim party
A single concentrated trimming session with multiple people (and possibly a live-stream) used to finish a harvest in one batch instead of trickling across weeks.
Proposed as the Season 2 solution to the trimming delay that hurt Season 1 pacing.
ep 042
Trim run vs flower run (for hash)
A hash-making distinction — a trim run uses only trim and larf as starting material while a flower run uses whole dry cured flower, with different yield and quality profiles.
Jeremy says he has about half a pound of trim and larf from the season and plans to do some flower runs versus trim runs to talk about the differences.
ep 041
tub method
Jeremy's compartmentalization rescue technique: cutting whole plants off and placing them loosely in plastic tubs (about half to three-quarters full) with the lid cocked open initially, allowing residual moisture inside stalks and nugs to redistribute and hold a micro-humidity around 60%.
Used when the dry room drops below target too fast. Jeremy uses black-and-yellow tubs and treats the method as his preferred alternative to DJ Short's paper bags.
ep 040
USB microscope
A small handheld USB-powered digital microscope used by cannabis growers to inspect trichome colour and check for pests on leaves.
Jeremy's primary trichome reading tool. He places a sample on paper, puts the USB scope on it, and takes video or photo snapshots to classify clear/cloudy/amber ratios. Also useful for spotting russet mites mid-grow.
ep 037
wash well
A plant's aptitude for producing good yield and quality when ice water / bubble hash washed — driven by mature, intact, bulbous trichome heads.
Jeremy says of Halitosis number 4: 'i'm hoping this one would wash really well' — referring to ice water hash processing.
ep 035
washing rosin
Making solventless hash rosin by ice-water washing the flower to isolate trichome heads, then pressing them with heat and pressure.
AJ says when washing rosin he thinks living soil does better in terms of flavor and overall potency to be honest.
ep 025
wet trim
Trimming fan and sugar leaves from cannabis flower immediately after harvest, before drying. Usually done at commercial scale to increase throughput.
Jeremy flatly rejects it as the BuildASoil method — 'never wet trim, it's the worst way'. He acknowledges large commercial operations use it because they have to.
ep 040
White ash
The clean white ash left behind when smoked herb combusts completely. Originates from the tobacco industry — it correlates with high calcium content in the plant, not with flushing.
Jeremy: white ash is about calcium, black ash is a calcium or cure problem, not a flush problem.
ep 005
whole plant hang
Hanging the entire plant — stock on, some leaf material left — rather than breaking it into branches, as a way to hold more residual moisture in the drying tent.
Jeremy recommends it for growers in dry climates as a way to elevate ambient humidity during drying.
ep 040
whole plant hang drying
The harvest technique of chopping the main stalk and hanging the entire plant upside down in the dry room, rather than breaking into branches.
Jeremy's default in Colorado because of the dry climate — leaves stay on, drying is slower, gentler, and terpenes are better preserved.
ep 037
yield per quadrant
The practice of recording harvested dry flower weight broken down per grow area or bed rather than just whole-room total.
Jeremy commits to reporting yield per quadrant for the 10x10 project, and would like to get down to yield per plant if time allows.
ep 037