What is Trimming Marijuana and Why You Should Do It

Right after your successful cannabis cultivation process, you may now be left with some large volumes of weed buds from your harvests! Alright, congratulations! But as much as I hate to be the bringer of bad news, your work doesn’t end there. As a matter of fact, there is still going to be a couple of week’s worth of work to put into your buds. Don’t worry, though! After going through practically a whole year of growing marijuana plants, what are a few weeks gonna do? Right after your harvests, some other procedures will have to be done for your buds to be fully viable for smoking and consumption. Along with drying and curing, another thing that you will need to do is trimming marijuana buds.

Is this really an essential part of growing? While we wouldn’t exactly call it that. Many growers forget it. However, we believe it is necessary to trim your cannabis buds. This way, you will fully get the best quality out of your gardens! 

What Is Trimming Marijuana Buds?

Trimming, which is also referred to as manicuring, is the process of removing and clipping away the sugar leaves and branches from the buds of your harvested products. Oftentimes, trimming also works as a way of removing any debris and stray materials. These are some that might have gotten stuck up in the buds. For example, tiny pebbles and seeds. 

It is one of the very last things you will be doing before enjoying your consumable and potent marijuana buds. You can do it either before or after you have dried out your cannabis plants, which classifies it further into wet or dry trimming. There are various types of trimming, all of which will take place right before you start curing your supplies. The end of the tunnel is near, and we can already see you sampling the delicious buds that you worked so hard on producing!

Trimming has become a part of the process of commercial growers out there, which ushers personal cultivators to do the same. More often than not, every bud that you purchase from stores has been properly trimmed and manicured. But why exactly are people so inclined to trimming marijuana buds? Let’s find out!

Why Should We Be Trimming Marijuana Buds?

As we said, many people will often consider manicuring and trimming marijuana as an essential step in their cultivation processes. Since it is very easy to do and will bring a very wide set of benefits to your end products, trimming is something that you won’t want to miss out on! Normally, the main reason why people would be trimming marijuana buds is for the appearance of the buds. But is that all? No! Trimming will also be able to smoothen out the whole smoking experience.

How They Look:

When walking into a cannabis dispensary or weed store, they would have all these different sorts of strains laid out on shelves. The first thing you would notice is how neat and well-formed they look! Trust us, the appearance of the buds will make up the majority of reasons that you will need to buy them! If you see a clean-looking batch of weed nugs that are just full to the brim with trichomes, will you really have enough in you to say no to it?

Even if you are a personal grower, trimming marijuana buds will help your supplies stay a lot more established and in good condition. Since sugar leaves and other small branches in your plants won’t serve much of a purpose after harvests, you will need to resort to taking these off. The aesthetics are just one side of the scale, however.

It Will Be Easier To Grind Up The Buds:

Placing your buds into a grinder with some branches and seeds in there will give you a rough time in twisting and turning this tool. As a result, you might not end up with this fine, ground-up product that you are so accustomed to! 

Also, have you ever tried placing sugar leaves into one of these? It will be a nightmare to clean up. Additionally, why would you exert some effort into grinding up things that you won’t even want to smoke in the first place? Save yourself some time and get these leaves and branches out!

Trimming Marijuana Affects The Flavors And Smell:

Smoking some branches will undoubtedly give you this bitter, burnt flavor that could ruin the hits of your smoking session! As these are not for smoking in the first place, then you might get a very unpleasant taste in your buds. 

This also applies to the sugar leaves. With these leaves staying out of the way, the terpene profiles of your buds can reach insane heights! Also, these sugar leaves can give a very “leafy” (if that makes sense) taste that can be unpleasant to your taste buds.

Better Effects And Smoother Smoke:

The bud to THC content of your products will be affected by the additional presence of sugar leaves in your weed! As a result, if you do not trim your buds, then you might need a lot more to get high. Sugar leaves do possess trichomes, it won’t nearly be as much as to provide the equal ratio of bud plants to THC! 

Methods For Trimming Marijuana:

There are basically two factors that will determine the way that you want to trim your marijuana buds: the materials that you use for trimming marijuana and the time in which you decide to do so. 

As to time:

Trimming marijuana buds can be classified as either dry trimming or wet trimming. Dry trimming will involve cutting off the sugar leaves after your buds have undergone proper drying after harvests. This takes place right before curing. It is the last thing to do before storing your cannabis buds in their containers. While the buds will be a lot less damp and gloopy, they tend to be harder to handle because they might crumble if exposed to too much pressure when trimming! 

Wet trimming, as you might have guessed, comes before drying out your cannabis buds! This is done right after you have plucked out and harvested the potent nugs in your gardens! This makes it a lot easier to dry out. The sugar leaves will allow the free flow of air around the buds during drying.

As to materials used:

The most common and traditional way of trimming marijuana buds is by hand-trimming using a pair of scissors or clippers. Up until recent times, this was the only method of trimming weed buds. It pretty much guarantees that anything that happens to the buds will all fall on you! Proper trimming is quite easy but it is, in no way, immune to human error. This method of trimming is classic and has since been followed even in today’s weed scenes!

While it isn’t as followed or common as hand-trimming, people are now able to purchase their very own machine trimmer. This is an essential tool to minimize the effort you put into getting your buds ready for consumption. These machine trimmers are for commercial and mass-produced batches of weed instead of personal growers! They can come at a pretty steep price, with the lower standard ones costing no less than $1,000. 

What You Will Need and How to Do It:

Don’t be afraid to start manicuring and trimming marijuana buds. Trust us when we say that it is extremely easy to do! Moreover, you will only need a pretty basic set of tools to perform the procedure. Regardless of what type of trimming method you choose, the materials and procedures will stay the same. 

First and foremost, you will want to secure a pair of trimming scissors. These have curved blades and are specifically designed to make the trimming of weed nugs much easier. However, if you do not own a pair or if you are having a hard time finding some, then a simple pair of standard scissors will do. 

Next up, make sure to trim your buds neatly! For this, you will want to have a tray in place. Any baking tray or metal tray will suffice. This helps you collect any trimmings and avoid spreading them out on the ground! Also, sugar leaves can serve a number of purposes in the future. Make sure to keep them! 

What Am I Trimming?

To trim your buds without causing any damage to them, you will want to focus on the sugar leaves. These are the smaller, trichome-coated leaves that will usually surround your colas and buds. For the best method of trimming, we recommend harvesting your buds by the branch with all the colas still attached to them. This makes drying a lot easier. Plus, it will also make the buds easier to handle with them still attached to their branches.

Clear away any fan leaves still attached to the branches. Another thing that you can do is remove fan leaves a few days before you decide to harvest! Either way will work, just as long as you remove the big leaves before trimming. 

Now, regardless of whether you choose dry trimming or wet trimming, handling the buds will pretty much be the same. Take each branch and cut down every bud from their base! Next, find any sugar leaves, branches, and seeds attached to them and cut them away. Be careful not to be pointing the trimmers into the buds! This can cause them to break their structures, which will make the buds fall apart. 

After trimming, you can place them into their drying boxes if you opted for wet trimming or simply store them for curing if you chose dry trimming! Trimming marijuana buds will give value to them that you just can’t brush off! As such, take the time to execute it properly and with care. Once you see the differences between trimmed and untrimmed buds, you will learn to appreciate just how important it is to the quality of your yields!