Hello cheap homegrown Nation. This is Shea McCormick from the cheap home grow podcast. And on today's show. I'm going to be introducing you to a guest that many of you already know and respect that guest is dr. MJ from cocoa for cannabis today. Dr. MJ comes on the show to talk about what not to do while growing your own. We also touch on topics such as cannabis fads. Watering defoliation harvesting and curing this podcast is information packed. So please sit back relax and learn as always, please subscribe and enjoy the show. Hello and welcome to the cheap home grow podcast a show for individuals that want to learn more about growing cannabis indoors. This is a podcast dedicated to helping you with your indoor growing Adventure. You'll learn how to grow your own and not have to rely on others for your medicine the cheap home grow podcast will also feature timely interviews with cannabis industry veterans shaping the culture and politics of cannabis. All right here is your host Shane McCormick and the cheap home grow podcast. Hello everybody. This is Shane McCormick from the cheap home grow podcast. And on today's show. We have returning guest. Dr. MJ Coco. He can be found on Twitter and Instagram at dr. MJ cocoa, and he was on the show a couple of weeks ago. He talked about stress training topping and today he comes back on the show and he is going to talk about what not to do while grown your own. Own at home. So doc. If you could could you please tell my audience a brief background about yourself? And then, you know, we can get right into the topic of conversation. And and also I just want to make mention that during this during this topic of conversation. We are going to be talking about fads water and buffering defoliation and harvest and curing so like I said doc, could you please tell my audience a little bit about yourself and then we can get Into the conversation from there. All right. Absolutely. Yeah. It's a pleasure to be back with you shame. My name is MJ Coco. I have a PhD and I'm a university Professor. My research has me working with Farmers. I got into growing my own cannabis actually after a referral from my rheumatologist and I got into growing in Cocoa with my background in in Horticulture. I quickly sort of understood the benefits of cocoa but saw, you know, A bunch of the information online was was unreliable. It was not accurate and oftentimes contradictory. So I ended up working with green Harvest press to publish the book Coco for cannabis at Grover's guide. And then I started the website cocoa for cannabis.com where our mission is to help Growers maximize their success by sharing proven practices and scientifically accurate articles tutorials and guides and it's a real pleasure to be on your show and try to share some of that. Same information with your listeners as well. Thank you for coming back on. I really do appreciate it. So, you know, but without any further Ado, I mean let's let's get right, you know, let's get right into the heart of the conversation. You know, what what should a grower do when excuse me? What should a grower not do when growing their own at home? Yeah, so he asked me to think about this and you know, I kind of put together some of the things that I thought were some mistakes. Yes, there's some issues that especially new Growers May sort of make or be tempted to make the first thing I wanted to say is there's a lot of fads. There's a lot of sort of growing fads or or gimmicks almost out there that you run into and a lot of Growers seem to be tempted by that. So recently I've seen fads like the the Gaslamp routine which has you provide. Very little light your plans during the vegetation or schwa thing, which has you removing practically all of the leaves during during flowering techniques like that. Those are fads sort of gimmick techniques that sort of fly in the face of basic Horticultural science. So avoid following those those fads and gimmicks and instead, you know, learn basic Horticulture. There's not really That much that's different about growing cannabis. If you understand sort of the basics of horticulture understand the medium that you're working with understand about the light and about how to use light especially in an indoor grow. Get some basic knowledge about the fertilizers and understand the different sort of regimes for providing fertilizer to your plants often times that the fertilizers are. Mixed with your water and so we refer to gating and so you should understand sort of the basics of fertigation, which is a balance. You can't put too much fertilizer in the water that will actually prevent the plants from being able to drink if you don't put enough fertilizer in the water, then they'll be under under nourished so that you know, you need to be able to learn that balance and then just the basics of training and pruning your plants. So there's Is no need for sort of radical defoliation like the schwa thing technique those things don't don't get benefits for you. If anything, they cost you significantly in terms of what you can expect to harvest so I would say yeah for Point number one would be don't follow the fads. Let's let's learn the basic Horticulture and try to you know, develop our good green thumb, right? Yeah, and so basically in other words don't do anything fancy. Just keep to the Basics exactly and those sort of fancier techniques of the two I mentioned I don't think have any credibility really whatsoever Gaslamp routine or swathing. I don't think are credible in terms of the the fundamental practices that they're based on there are some other techniques, you know, there's issues with like stressing the plants during flowering to improve the Reduction of cannabinoids I've been reading lately interesting studies about drought stressing plants and Coco. Those are sort of more Advanced Techniques to not try to experiment and in your first or second grow either you want to yeah, just get get the basics of horticulture. This is stuff that the farmers around the world have been mastering for Millennia and you know how to take care of plants. So they read your plans and understand sort of what they're telling you new Growers should try to spend some time in their Gardens every day so that they can you know, get to kind of know their plans get to understand the signals understand when their plans look happy and when they're plants look like they're struggling for different things and be able to sort of understand how to respond to those but by and large it's the basics. It's light its airflow. It's the right amount of fertilizer. It's the Right amount of water. Yeah, right sure and and I'm glad you brought up watering a very basic very basic question, you know how you know, how often should you water your cannabis plan and how much water should you know, shoot you give that plant? Yeah. This is a really a media specific question. If you're growing it's also depends on on the the size of the container that your plants are and So there's a couple different couple different issues one it let's talk about soil grows first. If you're growing in soil, the biggest issue that you have with water is probably over watering. It is soil gets pretty saturated when you water it. So when you're setting up in the first place, it's a good idea to add something to help aerate and help the drainage of your soil. That's what perlite is really the most effective way. For so most of the time good potting mixes or good soil mixes will include perlite but if you're still just getting set up with your soil grow, there's no problem with adding additional perlite to help with the drainage and that allows the the excess water to drain away and prevents you from draining from drowning the roots of your plant because Roots need both air and water. So if you have the roots completely submerged in water, They'll drown they'll die. And that's why I like if you're growing in deep water culture you need to use aeration you need to have are Stones bubbling through that water because the The Roots need both the air and the water. So the biggest problems with watering that Growers get into especially in soil is putting a small plant in a big container and then having trouble with over-watering this is One in a couple episodes ago. I talked about transplanting. Right and and this is really one of the big issues with transplanting and why it's so important to transplant especially in soil is to prevent over-watering because if you have a tiny little plant in a great big container and you water that container with water that plants not going to be able to take out very much of that water from such a big container. Its roots aren't big enough to sort of be sucking up a lot of that water. So a lot of the Just going to sit there and it's going to sit there for days and it's going to prevent the roots from getting the air that they need when the plant is much bigger. It can be in that bigger container because it's sucking up a lot of that water itself through its roots. But that's one of the reasons you want to keep your small cannabis plants in small pots because it makes it much more easy to water the plants, especially when they're young and it allows cause them to dry out much quicker in those smaller containers, which struck promotes are the same is is basically true with the small size of containers if you're growing in Cocoa, but if you're growing in Cocoa over-watering is really not a concern Coco holds onto are much better than soil dust and this is really one of the key advantages of cocoa is because even when it's Holy water even sort of just after you added water. There's enough air in the root Zone to prevent the roots from drying so Coco actually does a really great job of holding on to air and water. So the issue with cocoa is you don't want to let it get dry. So it sort of the exact opposite with soil in that regard with soil. You kind of want it to dry out again before you water again, but in Cocoa you never wanted to get totally drunk. Dry what happens when Coco gets totally dry is it leaves an increased sort of concentration of nutrients behind and because of the way the cocoa really doesn't interact or doesn't buffer nutrition that can burn your plants. So in Cocoa one of the reasons that Growers end up with tip burn oftentimes when they're growing and Coco. Is simply because they aren't watering often enough and in between waterings enough water is removed that it raises the EC of the solution and ends up burning their plants. So when it comes to watering their there really is not sort of one style if you're growing and soil you need to follow the the strategy for Effective fertigation in soil and if you're growing and Coco you need To follow the effective strategy for for growing and cocoa with both of those strategies though, if you're adding nutrients to the water, okay, whether it's organic or synthetic fertilizers, but if you are adding stuff to that water and then Watering your plants, you need to get run off every single time you water you need to water until runoff. Because otherwise the the fertilizers that you add with the water will just build up and build up and build up inside the media getting that runoff allows them to sort of flush out and and removes the excess salts that are accumulating. But if you never get that runoff, then you add water with nutrients the water evaporates. The nutrients stay behind you add more water with nutrients the water evaporates the nutrients they a bond and those nutrients are salts. And so that creates salt buildup in the media and can eventually cause either nutrient lockout or just simply nutrient Burn Let Me interrupt here when you say run off. I mean how much how much runoff are you talking about? Are you talking like, you know say like 20% Yeah 20% is a good is a good average. It doesn't have to be sort of very specific. You don't have to measure it. But if you're giving you know, and This really depends. So the rate their amounts are so different you end up using a much higher larger amount of water when you're when you refer to gaming in soil because you do it much less frequently. So it's oil you might give half a gallon to a gallon at each event to a full-size plan and then you should get you know a court if you've added a gallon of water you should get about a quart at the other end, but you don't have to measure it. You don't have to sort of be very If I can just kind of eyeball it I in Cocoa you do much smaller quantities because you do much higher frequency. And but again, it's like 20% I only water about a quart or less per event and I just want to make sure that you know, there's some well her coming out the other end of it. It doesn't have to be a lot but there should be some with watering. Hoka I mean from what I understand now, I mean this that is a medium that I've never tried but I'm from what I gather do you have to water like basically every day or every festive. Yeah. No, it's best to water every day. It's best to actually if possible. You want are more frequently than every day. I have an automatic drip system and I water during flowering five times a day just really small quantities of water the drip systems on a Time. Timer and it's all fully automated so I don't have to do really anything other than make sure there's water in the tank and make sure that the drain bucket which I have isn't full and overflowing. So but once a day watering is adequate in cocoa and yeah, you do want to be able to water it every day in soil during Peak sort of water needs you can get up to as frequently as every other day or Be every third day but you never really get all the way to every day in soil. My goal is a grower and everybody's has started different goals. Some people's goal may be to reduce the frequency that they have deferred a gate or water. My goal is to be able to fertig eight as often as possible because every time you fertig 8, it's right after you water your plants is when they have everything that they need. Lead in the exact right ratios that they need it you're able to sort of set it exactly right for them as they sit there the plants start absorbing some nutrients and they absorb nutrients and different rates. They absorb water and everything sort of is changing with the ratios. So it's drifting away from the ideal as the plants interact with the nutrient solution in us that the climate sort of interacts with the nutrient solution. So being able to sort of refresh Periodically sort of brings it back to that that ideal position. But yeah it once daily watering and if you're watering once daily, it should be right before just as the lights come on. If you're watering more frequently than that. I have actually charts that can help you figure out if you're doing multiple daily waterings sort of how to time them and how to space them given different light free light. Um, so if you're doing it on 18 6 or if you're doing it on 1212 sort of how to space out those those individual events. But yeah, you want to you want to water pretty frequently in Cocoa. Okay. All right. Um II, you know, I know that you're not a fan of defoliation. Yeah, or I guess I guess it's called I guess it's called strip strategic defoliation now, I mean what is default? Nation but but really, you know, why are you not a fan of this I guess of this fat. I mean what why is it so I guess bad in your opinion. Yeah. Well, you know, let me first by saying that there are reasons every once in a while to remove leaves to prune. So I'm not I'm not totally opposed to ever removing leaves. But what I am opposed to is the the sort of defoliation strategies that in discriminately remove leaves in what appears to be a misguided sort of effort to encourage the growth of flowers. So people talk about sort of focusing energy on bud development or focusing energy on the flower develop and and the idea seems to be that by removing leaves. It's going to expose Flowers to light and or redirect the plants energies or something along those lines and all of that sort of way of thinking about plants really flies in the face of Horticultural science. It's simply not the way sort of things work in a plant and it's important to note that there are exactly zero commercially produced crops that @ Rd foliated in an attempt to increase yield defoliation decreases yield and and there's really no question about that. Really the only crop that you could even find much on defoliation would be cotton and cotton. There's so aware that defoliation reduces yield that there's a whole science about how to default we ate and went into default. We ate so that it doesn't sort of adversely affect yield. And the only reason that they do defoliate cotton is to make it easy to machine Harvest and to harvest the cotton itself. It's not anything to promote the growth of the heart of the the crop. It's simply a harvesting preparation step. So let's let's get in if you don't mind I'll get into a little bit of a sort of the science as your of defoliation. First I will make four different points on this. The first one is flowers don't have the ability to photosynthesize. Okay. So exposing the flowers to light does not mean that they can then capture that light energy and mature flowers have some chlorophyll in them. It is true, but they don't have a sufficient capacity to really Reduce photosynthate that's used by the rest of the clan. So exposing flowers to light does nothing to promote photosynthesis. The second point that I'd like to meet there is on what's called flow. Sorry floral morphogenesis where the idea is. Okay, maybe the flowers don't photosynthesize, but maybe just being exposed to light promotes. Their development themselves, that would be the idea of floral morphogenesis. And in order for that to be true. The the flowers would have to know that they're exposed to light and there's been no photo receptor proteins found in flowers. So flowers themselves aren't sensitive to whether or not they're being exposed. to light leaves are and leaves do both of those things leaves have the ability to photosynthesize and leaves know when they're receiving light and develop differently whether or not they're receiving light flowers don't and you know, the plant science is still developing in some of these areas, but this is fairly confident science that the flowers don't respond to light the way that a lot of a lot of Home Growers sort of think that they do finally hear a lot of people think they say this idea that removing the leaves gets the plant to focus on growing flowers or somehow redirects energy. That would have gone to the leaves is now going to go to the flowers, but that confuses sort of the the flows. The energy through the plant leaves are never sinks where energy is deposited. That's not true very early in a Leafs development it acts as a sink but almost immediately when the leaf develops. It becomes a source of energy for the plant and photosynthate Flows In One Direction Z or sorry sugars flow in One Direction out of that leaf. They flow from the leaf to the rest of the plant. They never Flow the other direction. So the plant is never sort of supplying the leaf with anything other than water. It's the leaf that's applying the sugars to the rest of the plant. So leaves are sources of energy not sinks and when you cut the leaves off and when Growers do schwa thing or some people call it Bud based defoliation or other things like that often this A big sort of removal of the leaves act or shortly after the flip to 12 12. They often report that like right away their plants started a big growth spurt right after they did this they'll notice a bunch of new leaves growing and like it looks to them like, oh my God, I trimmed my plant and it went into a growth spurt as a result of that and that's actually somewhat true. However what they're witnessing. Icing is there witnessing the plant repairing the damage that they did and the plant is now forced to use spent are saved energy accumulated energy, which its stores in its roots are in the rest of the plant. It's used to burn through that energy to do more vegetative growth to produce more leaves to replace the leaves that you just cut off and that's that's sort of sapping your plant of energy that it I've been storing to help in producing the flowers and now you're using that energy to sort of allow the plant to recover from the trauma of the schwa thing or the trauma of the major defoliation. So that sort of evidence that a lot of Growers think is sort of indicates that there are defoliation generated positive response is actually their plant sort of you know, No, rating the savings account in order to recover from from this this event that it went through. So those those indiscriminate removals of a large numbers of leaves which are driven sort of by the theory that leaves are somehow a problem to the plans. Yeah, don't do that leaves are your friends. You should try to keep your leaves like I mentioned in a previous episode on Meaning even when I'm removing the growth tips early on because I'm trying to prune the shape of the plant that I want. I'll leave those leaves as long as the leaves are still getting light because as long as the leaf is getting light, it's producing energy for the plant, right? Yeah. So so basically the the leaf acts as a engine for your plan. Absolutely. Yeah. The only facts is as that engine. It's receiving the energy and it's important the Nothing I've heard about this is like the nutrients replace the energy that the leaves were providing or something along those lines that that's sort of not the way these things work either. It's really important for Growers to understand that the fertilizers are not plant food. It's really a terrible situation that we call fertilizer plant food because it gets Growers to sort of think that it's food like things that the plant eats for energy. All of the energy that powers plant growth comes from light and it's harnessed by the plant through photosynthesis, which takes place almost exclusively in the leaves. So the the nutrients that we provide aren't the food they're more like the vitamins and you simply can't replace the energy from leaves with vitamins with fertilizers only the leaves can produce that photosynthate the plant uses for its basic growth and the the nutrients that we provide only supplement that process only are these important micro and macro nutrients that are necessary for for being able to synthesize those those sugars and to be able to sort of run the basic functioning of the plant. It's not where the energy comes from. So the Energy starts it actually starts at the outlet where you plug your lights. Into or the power plant on the road, right? It comes through your lights in different lights sort of make different efficient use of that energy and then it's received by the plant through the leaves. And so the more leaves you have that are receiving light the more energy the plans going to be able to harness. That's why we try to train our plants out into that can insert table top shape where there's a lot of leaves that are just exactly the right distance. Distance from the light to be able to make maximum use of it. Okay. All right. Yeah, that's that's a that's a more than you know Fair opinion regarding Street, excuse me, regarding strategic defoliation, you know, but let's I'll tell you what let's let's move on to harvesting and curing now, what's your opinion on that? I mean what should a home grower not do there? Yeah. So I definitely think that sort of right at the end as well. A lot of really unfortunate mistakes can be made, you know, you get through the whole grow. You may have had some challenges along the way but you've gotten to the point where your plants are producing flowers and it looks like you know, you're going to have a successful Harvest and yeah, I'd like to talk about a couple of the things you can do wrong right at the end. They can sort of cost you significantly the first one is hard. Fasting too soon. And I think that you know, there's a big temptation to harvest as soon as the plants look like. They're ready to start smoking and start using and it really can be as sort of yield costing but but more potency costing mistake to harvest too early. And this is one of the reasons actually that I think that home grown cannabis. Is better than dispensary cannabis because in a commercial setting there's an incentive to harvest quickly and sort of turn over the crop and get a new crop in there and and keep the turnover and production time down and as a result, they probably Harvest most commercial cannabis a little bit early because they don't want to wait for it as a home grower. You can afford to you know, wait those extra few days your extra week or two. And let the the Cannabis flowers really mature properly. So I think the only effective way to know when to harvest is by checking your trichomes through a microscope or a Jeweler's loupe or some sort of magnification and in general. I think it's easiest to cut samples off of your plant and bring them to your desk. Table or someplace else like that where you can inspect them properly. It doesn't have to be a large sample. You can just take a little tissue sample almost like going to the doctor and getting a tissue sample taken just take a really small cut off of the plan and look at it under a little microscope or look at it under your Jeweler's loupe. But trying to do it on to the the plant as the plant is growing is very difficult to get sort of an accurate read and a good picture of what's going on. Make sure that you're looking at the buds themselves. So make sure you're looking at trichomes that are growing on calyxes not trichomes that are growing on sugar leaves. Okay, the sugar leaves that grow and about the the buds those trichomes will turn before the trichomes on the buds themselves turn. So your listeners may not know this but The trichomes are the little mushroom shaped organs, which is where most of the cannabinoid production in a cannabis plant actually takes place and early in the flowering period they're going to be clear and when they're clear is actually when they're producing cannabinoids as they sort of reach Peak production. They turn Amber or sorry, they turn sort of a cloudy color first and that cloudy color is are you want to you want to be able to harvest them? I try to harvest my plans when all of my trichomes are cloudy and that's when they have Peak cannabinoid quantities. The best ratio usually have THC to CBN and it hasn't started to degrade when you start to see Amber trichomes the tops of the little mushrooms actually turn. A dark amber color that's an indication that that trichome has gone too far. It's going to have a higher percentage of CBN, which is not it's not CBD that I'm talking about its THC degrades into CBN and that it's what you don't usually want that. It's not sort of getting more CBD sometimes Growers think that the ratio of THC to CBD is set by the genetics of this train. It's not set by the time period in which you Harvest it but if you harvest your high THC strains too late, a lot of that THC is now broken down into CB n which is a less desirable cannabinoid. So you want to get them before they turn Amber, but after they've they've turned cloudy sometimes it's a tough balance to split because you'll have On Any Given plant. You'll have some clear and some cloudy and some Amber. I do a pretty quick flush because I grow in Cocoa. So I wait until I see an Amber trichome on a calyx not on a Sugar Leaf again, and then I'll start the flush and usually after that by the time that the flushes ended there aren't any clear left there the vast majority of them are cloudy trichomes with maybe a few Amber and that's when I harvest so So you want to wait, sometimes it takes a long wait, I recently grew a plant that was supposed to be a 7-week flowering plant and it took 74 days before I harvested it. Wow. Yeah, it was over 10 weeks. It was supposed to be seven weeks and I kept having a me. I kept checking. I kept waiting. I kept checking and you don't harvest the plant because the breeder timeline is up. You don't harvest the plant because it The time that you thought don't harvest the plant based just on looking at the pistols the little hairs. It is true that if the plant has a lot of white little hairs. It's probably not ready yet. But sometimes all the hairs can curl in and turn dark and still take a week or two before the trichomes can can fully could turn so it's worth it to invest in a little microscope. I got a microscope for like 12 bucks or something and to watch watch your buds to make sure you're harvesting at the right time. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Well, you know, you said what 74 days? Yeah that's on 1212 time. Then we were only actually flowering I think for 68 days, but still it was supposed to be flowering 449. So a solid three weeks you no longer than what it was supposed to be which as the seven weeks train that's like 50 percent longer than advertised. Um, so you got to be aware that there's a lot of phenotypic variation most of the seeds that were buying that breeders advertisers having one set of traits that may be true for some of the phenotypes of that that seed but they're not phenotypically steady. They don't have F1 homogeneity and most cannabis strains so different phenotypes and and that was a phenotype that was on much longer flowering period . Time which is really something you should be aware of and almost expect with cannabis seeds these days is that you've got to be aware of what the plant is doing and it's not just going to be sort of based on a formula or a timeline or anything else. Now after the Harvest comes the curing of your cannabis, so and you know, I mean what I tell you what what are your what are your thoughts there? Yeah curing is probably where carrying is what separates started? The best bud from everything else. It's it's what you know makes top shelf bud and no matter what you start the curing process with if you don't cure. Well, you're not going to end up with top shelf. But so the the process the first you want to dry your plant there's different ways to dry it. You can dry it on a rack or you can I just hang my branches upside. Down you want to keep the the climate as sort of consistent during the dry as possible. I try to keep it at 50% humidity and 70 degrees with just a little bit of air flow and then depending on the size of the buds and to spending on sort of the specific parameters of when of you know the humidity and the temperature that you're drying at it'll take anywhere from two to Six days to dry that sort of that first step. I usually Jarred up and sort of move from drying to curing when the smallest buds are still sort of putting up a little bit of a fight when you try to pull them off the branch if the smallest buds sort of pull right off the branch then it's dried too far if they were still really putting up a fight then. Not dry enough, but if they kind of come off, but they're sort of pulling a string with them when they come off. That's about the right there. I'd agree. Some of the smaller branches should now sort of almost snap when you go to fold them instead of just be pliable. They should sort of more snap. But again, it's just two or three days in most climates that you want to drive them and then I put them into quart size. Jars corn size Widemouth jars and I weigh out one ounce usually for each jar that keeps the right amount of sort of Bud and are within the jar. I seal up the jars. I only have one good hygrometer. And ie I recommend that you get a good hygrometer. I have the the caliber for which is sort of the standard. It's sold primarily. For for humidors for cigars, but it's a small little device that you can fit easily into the Cure into the quart sized jar with your buds and you get a reading I'd like them to start at about 65% So oftentimes, you know, I can just sort of gauge it based on the dry and no and get them into the jars and I'll end up right around 65% Send relative humidity when the temperature again is about 70 degrees. Um, and if it's higher than that, then I'll either leave the jars open for a while or I'll dump the buds back out for a while and then join them up and see if they can get them down to that 65-degree are 65% number if it's lower than that, what I'll do is I'll actually cut pieces of the stem from the Aunt that, you know the buds came off of I'll cut up pieces of the stem because the stem still holds a lot of moisture and I'll just add those pieces of stem into the Cure jar. Usually it only takes a few hours for that those pieces of stem to successfully sort of raise the humidity and the jars up enough. I know a lot of people use the the Boveda human impacts or other these sort of you know, Don't I guess I don't have a huge problem with them. I've just found them to be unnecessary and I'd rather if my bud needs to be rehydrated. I'd rather rehydrate it with water that came from like inside the cannabis plant that's in the stems as opposed to water that was like in some sort of desiccant pack, you know for a while. It just seems better and once they're stable so I try to get them to 65% That's Of my my initial goal on my jars and I try to get them there within 48 hours which never usually is a problem. Even if it takes a while even if it takes like adding sticks and taking sticks out and hearing out the jar or whatever after 48 hours. I can get all my jars to be 65% and stable by themselves no more sticks or anything in there that will ya now Doc. I mean now why why 65% I mean, what's the You know, what's the reasoning behind that? Well, the the Cannabis is going to cure the best between 60 and 65 percent. Okay, you want it? Basically what a cure is a really slow dry such that preserves sort of the the structure and promotes the distribution of the oils and the cannabinoids. So you want to allow the Cannabis to sort of stay in a stable temperature. Mature or sorry to stable while temperature and but really humidity for a long period of time with a periodic but not very frequent are exchanged and that promotes the the buds to just sort of set up and and cure any higher than that risks mold. So if you're up in the high 60s to the low 70s RH that for certain reasons And that would actually be better but the risk is that you're going to develop mold and nobody wants that right. Nobody wants to sort of grow their plants out and then put them in jars and get the moldy and have it be unuseful. So it's not worth the risk of going above 65 and if you're if it is above 65, I always try to get it down to 65 quickly. If it's drier than 60 the buds will dry out too much. They'll be um too crumbly and it can actually adversely affect taste as the terpenes aren't well preserved and it can adversely affect strength or potency as the cannabinoids can degrade quicker. So keeping him in The Sweet Spot of 60 to 65. It is really ideal and that's that's sort of in perpetuity than you want. To keep them at that range 65 is where I try to keep them initially for the Cure and for the first several weeks. They cure. I keep them pretty high like that. But by the end of the Cure and for long-term storage, I like to keep them right at 60 61, you know, 59 is fine and I'm able to do that just by keeping the jars closed like I don't have to add the Boveda packs it sort of happens and a natural progression if I start them. It's 65 by the end of the Cure they'll be at like 63 and by the end of the Cure. I mean at the end of the first month because for that first month, you should be burping your jars every day. Sometimes twice a day to sort of keep the humidity for the first month. I'm rotating my hygrometer to all my different jars and I'm writing down their numbers every day, but after that month, they'll be at you know, 62, maybe 63 And over the next couple of months. I only opened the jars maybe once a week maybe once every other week and eventually once a month or not even once a month and they'll be stable at that 60 61 percent number for up to a year if I'm going to keep the bud for more than a year. I'll freeze it but for within a year, I just keep them in the jars and it's able to keep that that stable. Oil at that range for a really long period of time. All right. Well doctor we talked about fads watering defoliation harvesting and curing you know, is there anything else that you want to touch upon or is that is that as I pretty much it that seems like a lot of ground I think for one episode. Yeah. No, I imagined that you know people may have some things to say about some of the stuff that I said particularly about defoliation. I know that opinions runs strong on some of these topics Shane and people have their their you know, their practices and their their ideas about how their practices work and you know without they work better than other things and I don't I don't want to sort of offend anybody with any of this. I'm just trying to sit in the shed some light from the science of of horticulture and sort of What we'd have to say about some of these practices but you know, I have a I have a lot of love for all of the different Growers and all their different styles and strategies and one of the things that I really love about, you know, the the grow journals on our forum is just seeing how people are able to grow and in such radically different ways and how really resilient these cannabis plants are so that's maybe another good good lesson for Growers. To understand is we're growing a plant. That's really remarkably resilient. It's a good growing plant that there's a reason people call it weed. It grows sort of really well. So it provides a lot of room for grower error. It provides a lot of room for us to experiment with different training techniques and different styles. So nobody should feel bad about anything that they've done. Nobody should feel, you know, inadequate or Or uneducated or anything like this. This is part of the process. We learn by growing we learned by sort of getting involved and we learn hopefully also sometimes by listening to cheap homegirl podcasts. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. Alright. Alright. Well doctor MJ. Listen, I do, you know, as always I along with my listeners. We appreciate you coming on the show and you know, I hope to talk to you again soon. We you know, We really do appreciate what you have to say here. Absolutely Shane. It's been a pleasure. I'd be happy to be back on the show again. And I just like to invite your Gars if you're interested in seeing my grows or in chatting with me to come and check out our format cocoa for cannabis.com. We have a friendly little community of Growers. And I know you'll be documenting your grow and growing with us and they veneers grow Challenge and so come and check those out and Yeah, invite all your listeners to be part of our growing Community. All right, man. Well, thank you very much. I do appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you Shane. Hello cheap homegrown Nation. Thanks for listening to my podcast with dr. MJ. You can visit him online at CoCo for cannabis.com and on Instagram and Twitter at dr. MJ Coco. You can also sign up for his spring Auto flour challenge that I'll be participating in this. Coming spring. I hope you've enjoyed this episode and please remember to press the Subscribe button. You can visit cheap home grow.com forward backslash episode 59 to get show highlights. And please remember to sign up for my email list. Also, please remember to watch my live YouTube show Growing with my fellow Growers this upcoming Sunday at At 7 p.m. Eastern time you can visit cheap home grow.com forward backslash YouTube to subscribe to my channel as always, please subscribe to this podcast and leave a review and I look forward to talking to you next Tuesday. I am reaching out to you to ask you really one question and I want to know how am I doing as a podcaster? What topics do you want me to cover is Anything specific. Please reach out to me. Please. Get back to me. I can be found online at cheap home grow.com under the contact us page. And also you can message me directly on my Twitter and Instagram account at cheap home grow. Thank you for listening to the cheap home grow podcast. We do our best to bring you quality content. Let's grow together. Please hit the Subscribe button. 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On today's show, I have returning guest Dr. MJ from CocoForCannabis. Dr. MJ comes on the show today to discuss what he thinks you should no do while growing your own at home. In addition to that, Dr. Mj and I discuss certain fads aka trends he thinks you should stay away from when growing. He also touches on watering, defoliation, harvesting, and curing. This episode is information packed so please sit back, relax and learn. Also, please remember to subscribe. 