How to cut and dry marijuana correctly

Robert Bergman

18 Aug 2022 — 8 min read

cutting marijuana strain

It’s time to cut the plants. This is actually not really difficult, but there are some things you have to take into account.

You have to prepare a bit, because you can’t just run to the store to get some more supplies during cutting.

This is because your clothes, hair and entire body will smell like weed. And you have to shower properly to get rid of the smell.

The section on drying describes everything you need to do in detail, but I always start with a little overview of the used items and provide a little explanation.

These are the things I always use for a cutting session;

Old clothes
Old chair
Small scissors
Pruning shears
Latex gloves
Cardboard box
Drying net
Food and drinks

Cutting takes quite a while and you get a bit stoned from it as well, so make sure you have some good food and drinks nearby so you don’t have to leave the house during your session.

The drying net is only needed if you cut the weed wet, so if you first cut the weed and then dry it.

It’s also possible to dry the weed on a garbage bag on the floor. Make sure to shuffle regularly to prevent molding.

Chair and box for drying marijuana — Certain materials

The other items pretty much speak for themselves. Make sure you have sharp little scissors with large handles; otherwise your fingers will start to hurt.

Use old clothes and an old chair because they’re going to smell. Other than that, everyone has his or her own preferences for certain materials.

I always sit in the growing room, because otherwise the entire house will smell like weed.

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That’s not that big of a deal if you live in a detached house, but you can expect some complaints from neighbors if you live in an apartment.

It’s also important to think about where you’re going to dry your weed.

Your growing room is the ideal place because there’s air extraction, you can make it perfectly dark and properly manage the temperature.

The disadvantage is that you can’t start your next batch until your weed has dried, because weed is dried in the dark.

Temperature 70 F
Humidity 40-50%
Let a light breeze run through the growing room

Cutting

Don’t cut down all your plants right away, because that makes it difficult to cut the weed.

This is because the leaves will start to hang within half an hour after you cut down the plant, which makes it very difficult to cut and it would take you twice as long.

So always do a couple of branches at a time.

Cutting marijuana step 3 — Grab a branch

Cutting marijuana step 4 — Grab a branch

Grab a branch, remove the larger leaves and cut smaller leaves. You can remove the large leaves, because these don’t contain any THC.

The small leaves however are full of THC, so you could use these to for instance make ice hash or weed butter.

Cutting marijuana step 5 — Cut smaller leaves

Cutting marijuana step 6 — Cut smaller leaves

Remove all leaves that grow out between the buds. Remove as much leaf as possible, because these give smoking a bad taste.

In the picture you can see that I have the lid of a storage box on my lap. This allows me to cut in a clean and organized way.

Cutting marijuana step 8 — Process each branch

Cutting marijuana step 9 — Process each branch

Process each branch like this until you’re done. I cut about 3.5 ounces (100 grams) an hour, but I of course have some experience ;).

A starter cuts about 1.75 ounces (50 grams) an hour. The most important thing is to do it neatly and remove all little leaves.

I used a tumble trimmer for the smaller buds. This is a cutting machine you have to crank up manually.

Electric ones are also available but they make a ton of noise. And you can only cut a limited number of buds at a time.

See a short report on how to cut weed with the tumble trimmer below.

Tumble

So you don’t have to cut the weed but you have to remove the large stems.

You can just pick the buds with your hands to prevent any stems from getting into the tumble trimmer. The leaves can just stay on.

Tumble marijuana step 4 — Pick a good handful

Tumble marijuana step 5 — Pick a good handful

Pick a good handful of weed and make sure there are no large stems in there. These could cause the blade that cuts the leaves to break off.

Tumble marijuana step 7 — Tumble trimmer

Tumble marijuana step 8 — Tumble trimmer

Distribute the weed over the grid of the tumble trimmer. As you can see it looks like a dish with a grid on top. A blade (iron wire) is stretched right underneath that grid, across the entire diameter.

All leaves that penetrate the grid are therefore cut off by the iron wire. The lid contains a sort of black rubber “fingers” that spin the weed around a bit on the grid.

This ensures that all leaves are eventually cut off.

Tumble marijuana step 10 — Place the lid

Tumble marijuana step 11 — Place the lid

Place the lid on the trimmer and turn about 5 times clockwise and 5 times counter clockwise and your weed is cut  The bin under the grid catches all leaves and possible bits of weed.

This cutting waste is perfect to bake a nice space cake with.

Tumble marijuana bud result — Trimmer result

Tumble marijuana bud result focus — Trimmer result

Here two more pictures of the result. It’s especially important to not spin it too long, because you’ll eventually end up without any weed.

But as you can see the results are fine if you use the device properly.

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Drying

I slowly cut all plants and it looks very bare in the growing room. I can’t wait to start over again.

The result is a box full of weed. The weed is nice and green and shimmers from the crystals.

I don’t have my scale at hand, but it’ll be around five pounds. The dry yield is about 20-25% of the wet weight, so you can already weigh and estimate what you’re going to end up with.

The weed can now be placed in a special drying net or on garbage bags on the floor.

Spread out the weed a bit so the buds touch each other just a bit. Don’t put them too close together and don’t stack them on top of each other, because that could cause the buds to rot.

The temperature has to be around 70 F, the humidity around 50% and a small breeze in the room will dry the weed a bit faster.

The weed has to dry in the dark, so make sure all lamps are turned off and turn off the time switch of your grow light for now.

Under these circumstances it will take about 6 to 9 days on average before the weed is dry.

It’s a bit faster than when you hang the entire plant upside down, because they leaves and branches are already removed in this case.

Carefully shuffle your weed a bit every day. This prevents molding and rotting.

562 grams of marijuana buds — Result is 562 grams

The final result is 19.82 ounces (562 grams)! That’s an amazing yield for this setup.

You wouldn’t expect is when you saw that little field, but the plants contained a lot of small, hard, heavy buds. All those nugs eventually lead to a great result!