How To Use Every Part Of The Cannabis Plant This Harvest Season

This is the time of year when home growing cannabis farmers are drying and curing their summer crops. Drying rooms, closets and curing jars take on the pungent smells of drying leaves and a wonderful mix of terpenes that perfume the home and make your nose open its eyes wide.

While many home growers are all about putting up several jars of finely cured buds, medical marijuana patients often think about harvest as opportunity on many levels. Whether you are a registered medical marijuana patient or not, cannabis offers relief from pain, sleeplessness, lack of appetite, and inflammation to just name a few.

People with a little knowledge can create a variety of products at home that will stock the home herbal medicine cabinet. Making full use of the plant is not only a matter of efficiency but of respecting the plant enough to use all of what it has to offer.

There are many ways to make use of your harvest to make it take on special character and last a bit longer. Let’s take a look at a few:

Buds

The tried and true, gold standard. Once properly dried and cured, a few jars of well trimmed buds provide a nice supply for smoking and vaping. Storage in dark, glass jars help protect potency. An optional humidor packet, like those made by Boveda, ensure proper humidity level in storage.

Fresh trim

Trim or trimmed leaves from manicured bud has become much more valuable over the years as people have learned how to make better use of it. Though lower in potency, a look through a microscope or good loupe glass will show that trim can still be a trichome rich environment.

Fresh frozen trim

It allows for the production of great homemade bubble hash, tinctures and raw cannabis smoothies.

Dried Trim

Well dried trim is the key ingredient for traditional Moroccan dry sieved hashish, tincture and can be made into butters/oils. With a couple of simple tools you can turn dry trim into fresh pressed solventless rosin. Weed tea, a traditional Jamaican relaxant is an easy treat to make as well.

Males And Hermies 

While often harvested as soon as they appear, a grown male of hermaphroditic plant can still be cannabinoid rich. Male plants contain the same cannabinoid acids as females, though lower in potency. They may be dried and processed as lower potency butters/oils.

Cannabis Oils 

Once you have created some good, clean cannabutter or infused oil you can make canna caps, edibles, medicated syrups and jams.

Root Ball 

Although it is the least utilized part of the plant, the root ball may be cleaned, dried, ground and infused into a tincture. Ancient Chinese doctors used cannabis root as a diuretic. The Romans used it for joint stiffness and gout. 

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As many cannabis enthusiasts know, with homemade products the real trick is figuring out appropriate dosing. Since legal access to legitimate and low cost testing is limited, most kitchen wizards will have to continue to be their own guinea pig and taste their own products in trial runs.

Wishing you a bountiful post harvest. May your cabinets be stocked with a great variety of cannabinoid goodness.