Flower Wash

Your plant has been through a full season outside, collecting dirt, mold spores, debris, bugs, doo doo… outside is a dirty place!

A proper flower wash will help ensure that your flower is clean and safe to consume, and can also help set your dry up for success. And it’s not too difficult to do.

I ascribe to a 4 bucket system. Standard 5 gallon buckets like you’d find at the home improvement store work just fine, but large totes can be better if you like keeping your harvest in larger chunks. For what it’s worth, larger chunks of plant tend to dry slower, which helps retain terpenes during the dry process. This results in better aromas and flavors, but that’s not the topic we’ll be tackling today.

The concern always comes up around the flower wash process knocking trichomes off of the buds. In my experience, that doesn’t happen unless you’re particularly rough with your flower. If you’re so deep into it as to be reading my drivel, you’re probably pretty delicate anytime you handle your harvest.

Let’s get started! Begin by cutting bucket-sized colas from your plant when harvesting. You’ll want to perform your flower wash on freshly harvested flower, prior to putting it into the dry space. I use water out of the tap without adjusting temperature, which seems to be good enough for the girls I go out with.

Here’s the recipe…

Bucket one, water with lemon juice: About 1/2 cup of lemon juice in a 5 gallon bucket does the trick for me.

Bucket two, water with baking soda: 2 heaping tablespoons in the 5 gallon bucket will get the job done.

Bucket three, water and hydrogen peroxide: 1/2 cup in the 5 gallon bucket is right where you want to be.

Bucket four, water: Just water.

NOTE: If you are feeling froggy, add an additional bucket to the mix with a solution of water and Agrowlyte. Probably run this one after the Hydrogen Peroxide, before the plain water. The Hypochlorous Acid in Agrowlyte is a safe and effective all purpose cleaner which should do a bang up job rounding out the flower wash. I haven’t tried it myself, five buckets seems like overkill to me. But don’t let that deter you in your quest to do better. If you try it out, please share your results and mix ratios in the comments below so we can all learn together.

Fully submerge your cola, leaves and all, into the first bucket. Swish it around for about 10-15 seconds, you don’t need to be gentle but don’t beat the crap out of your buds. Let it drip for another 15 seconds or so, and onto the next bucket.

For the final rinse in the fourth bucket (water), I’ll go a little longer… more like 30 seconds. Hang the cola to dry, bonus points if you hang it in the sun for a few hours after doing your bud wash.

TIP: Get your harvest into a dark, cool, dry space as quickly as you can after your flower wash. Light degrades trichomes and cannabinoids.

Ready for some bro-science? I try and harvest before dawn, which there may be some benefits to. One of the benefits I still kind of believe in is the opportunity to hang the harvest in the sun for the day after harvesting. This allows it to drip dry from the flower wash. UV rays help zap latent mold spores while photosynthesis continues for one more day.

A nice, neat harvest lined up in the sun is a brilliant spectacle. However, it’s probably best to go with what science we have in place, and get your flower into the dark as soon as is practicable… all squeaky clean from your four bucket wash!