Grow tent "drying" hack

WrinkledNugSack

WrinkledNugSack

Well-known member
For the people who are in the dry areas of the world, this simple hack may "help" in your drying process... it's far from perfect but it costs minimal dollars and you may already have the parts you need.

I live in an area where during the winters I can easily see sub 30% humidity in the house. This will cause your plants to dry in less than (or about) 3 days.

I have tried running cheap household humidifiers in the tent when I dry, but it hardly helps the dry time, BUT, certainly does clog the carbon filter with dissolved impurities from the water.

So, last winter when I came to the end of the harvest I decided to run another hose back into my tent from the exhaust end of my fan (I have it outside the tent anyway). I chopped the plants down whole and hung them in the tent. I then watered the pots that they came out of with the thought that the soil would transpire at least "some" of the necessary moisture back into circulation. It worked by raising the humidity to the point where I dried in about 6 days and the cannabis didn't have any indication of that hay smell.

This year, (depending on the ambient humidity), I am going to "likely" add another pail or two of soil along with the fabric pots that are already in the tent to raise the humidity a bit higher yet. The "intake filters" are still left open, the only thing I do is pipe the exhaust air back into the tent instead of expelling it into the house (basement).

If you want and "need" to try an easy and simple humidity hack, you might want to experiment with this one. AND, if you have your tent sitting empty right now, you might try to toss a humidity meter in the tent and try out a dry-run of your own... just remember you won't have the moisture that would be coming from the plants themselves to assist you in this case.

I wouldn't want to mislead anyone, but I "think" i got the humidity up to 45% (+/-) by doing this.

I have thought about putting a shallow try of water in the tent with a heating matt underneath it, but I don't like the (potential) water/electricity combo. Perhaps, a heating pad under the moisturized fabric pots, but I think just more well moisturized grow medium should get me to 7-8 days drying time.
 
Provided that you don't atomize the water it would probably help... I opened up a Mountain-air (I think that's the name) carbon filter after it became clogged... I was shocked at how much calcium (etc) residue was in the activated carbon.

I'm still working on a good hack to re-charge a carbon filter... so far I haven't found anything that is financially beneficial, not to mention the labour /time input.
 
Wow, I'm glad it doesn't get that dry here. We complain about the humidity sometimes, but if my plants dried in three days I'd crap myself.

Interesting hack. Here I've seen people who are fussy about their drying use standard grow tents with an exhaust fan on a humidistat.
 
It's all seasonally variable (the humidity); in another month it will likely be closer to 45% ambient RH, so drying will be that much easier. I am such a light-weight that I can easily grow more in one harvest than I'd possibly consume myself before it reached its shelf life. I weighed my "typical" charge that I put in my pipe and it was .12 grams, and there was still green in the bottom when I cleaned it out. I stoke the pipe maybe twice a week, so .25 grams per week on average ha ha!.

This is why I am looking for someone who has old beans who wants someone to do a preservation run. I don't claim to have any special techniques that no one else has, but I'd try. In return I'd expect to keep 10 beans for myself, and the rest would go back to the point of origin. However, I am totally an unknown in the cannabis community, so I highly doubt that I'll ever find anyone who has something that is as close to landrace as it gets, and who has the faith that I'd be up front about what I'm promising to do. Lets face it, there are FAR more liars in the cannabis space than there are credible, honest, and trustworthy folks. Plus, the point of origin would have to be in Canada for legal reasons.

And I know, growing landrace genetics is a fools-errand if you are expecting to find anything commercially competitive. I view the old beans like a scrap yard views old cars... the entire thing is a POS except, the transmission or the rear differential might be good. If we can keep some of these old cultivars alive until science catches up, we might find a cure for dementia, or Parkinson's , etc. There will be a point where DNA analysis will be able to identify which plants have medicinal value and which can be let go because they don't show any particular promise. Just like the scrap yard, I'm sure a Ford 9" diff is still highly sought after, but why take the seatbelts out and put them on a shelf, when they will likely never sell or be of value.
 
WrinkledNugSack said:
For the people who are in the dry areas of the world, this simple hack may "help" in your drying process... it's far from perfect but it costs minimal dollars and you may already have the parts you need.

I live in an area where during the winters I can easily see sub 30% humidity in the house. This will cause your plants to dry in less than (or about) 3 days.

I have tried running cheap household humidifiers in the tent when I dry, but it hardly helps the dry time, BUT, certainly does clog the carbon filter with dissolved impurities from the water.

So, last winter when I came to the end of the harvest I decided to run another hose back into my tent from the exhaust end of my fan (I have it outside the tent anyway). I chopped the plants down whole and hung them in the tent. I then watered the pots that they came out of with the thought that the soil would transpire at least "some" of the necessary moisture back into circulation. It worked by raising the humidity to the point where I dried in about 6 days and the cannabis didn't have any indication of that hay smell.

This year, (depending on the ambient humidity), I am going to "likely" add another pail or two of soil along with the fabric pots that are already in the tent to raise the humidity a bit higher yet. The "intake filters" are still left open, the only thing I do is pipe the exhaust air back into the tent instead of expelling it into the house (basement).

If you want and "need" to try an easy and simple humidity hack, you might want to experiment with this one. AND, if you have your tent sitting empty right now, you might try to toss a humidity meter in the tent and try out a dry-run of your own... just remember you won't have the moisture that would be coming from the plants themselves to assist you in this case.

I wouldn't want to mislead anyone, but I "think" i got the humidity up to 45% (+/-) by doing this.

I have thought about putting a shallow try of water in the tent with a heating matt underneath it, but I don't like the (potential) water/electricity combo. Perhaps, a heating pad under the moisturized fabric pots, but I think just more well moisturized grow medium should get me to 7-8 days drying time.
Click to expand...
Try a two big household wicking humidifier. They look like tower fans they are 38 inches tall and hold about 3 gals. There are even larger ones too. I find like you said you can expect about a 10+ rh gain running one of these. The nice thing about wicking ones is you can just change out the wicks. No minerals are being evaporated or vaporized like a ultrasonic one. Theres also no steam or vapor emitted its just a fan with a wet towel basically so no areas of excessive humidity for example if you have a plant hang with a couple feet of the humidifier it wont mater. You can even use tap water in them.
 
I had a couple of the small wicking ones to begin with, but they got so encrusted with the dissolved impurities and the day to day maintenance wasn't worth the hassle. When I ran across the ultrasonic ones, I thought "here's the ticket", but I didn't for-see the problems they would provide.

I do however, have some industrial sewing machines and a couple of old wool blankets kicking around, so if my idea of adding the moistened soil doesn't work out, I could always rig something up to wick water up from a shallow pan... the oscillating fan is running in the tent anyway. This is another time this year when I wish I had an old wringer washer... once the blankets were so overwhelmed with impurities, the R/W would come in handy to clean them out.

Plus, I have two intake filters that I left open and just cutting one out of the equation might make a bit of difference too. It will be an ongoing experiment to see what works the cheapest and best.

Thanks for the heads up!
 
Do you have a water filter of some kind? RO is idealy distilled water from the store but that gets expensive fast. I just changed the filter each run but I dont use them more than a week or two. The towers are nice too because I only need to fill them like once a day.

the wicking filters have vitamin c to kill molds and viruses. You could just purchase the wicking material and make your own with a 5 gal bucket and a fan too. A big filter is like 10-15 bucks.
 
I've heard of people using a bucket of water and a towel partially submerged with the rest of the towel draped over the rim. Also, I'm not sure if you have any Walmart stores near you, but the one near me sells RO water from bulk dispensers for like 40 cents per gallon. That's what I use in my ultrasonic humidifier, and I have no issues with dusts or films since I switched. Hope this helps you. Good luck.
 
as has become habit, I’m high and scrolling through old posts where I can weigh in.

Similar to OP, my wintertime ambient rh is regularly into the 30’s. I have limited space and have sacrificed a dedicated drying space in lieu of a veg tent, so I have to make due.

I’m a big proponent of dry trimming and using a paper bag to ‘ease’ the flowers down to an acceptable moisture level. It’s really only something that can be gained through experience and fucking up a bunch.
 
Slackerbucks said:
as has become habit, I’m high and scrolling through old posts where I can weigh in.

Similar to OP, my wintertime ambient rh is regularly into the 30’s. I have limited space and have sacrificed a dedicated drying space in lieu of a veg tent, so I have to make due.

I’m a big proponent of dry trimming and using a paper bag to ‘ease’ the flowers down to an acceptable moisture level. It’s really only something that can be gained through experience and fucking up a bunch.
Click to expand...
Do you also put the paper bags into a tied up plastic bag? I saw a podcast with Notsodog, and that's how he, and others, kept theirs. I've never tried it personally.
 
Slackerbucks said:
as has become habit, I’m high and scrolling through old posts where I can weigh in.

Similar to OP, my wintertime ambient rh is regularly into the 30’s. I have limited space and have sacrificed a dedicated drying space in lieu of a veg tent, so I have to make due.

I’m a big proponent of dry trimming and using a paper bag to ‘ease’ the flowers down to an acceptable moisture level. It’s really only something that can be gained through experience and fucking up a bunch.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I've done that as well, but I don't like all of the handling... I want to trim off all of the water leafs and then hang dry the plants whole... once they are ready, I prefer to pop them off of the stem/branches and let them fall into stainless steel goat's milk buckets (I find they work the best).

I also save the stems that are left over... I bundle them like twigs and if I need to regulate the moisture levels in the SS jugs (if I happened to have gotten the flower a tad dry) I do it with the stems... I've never gotten it so wrong that I've had to use green water leafs; but the cure is a different duck all together vs. drying.

I'll be good for RH this time around as the meters are showing 50% rh and that's close enough for me.
 
capdistdank said:
Do you also put the paper bags into a tied up plastic bag? I saw a podcast with Notsodog, and that's how he, and others, kept theirs. I've never tried it personally.
Click to expand...

I heard him talking about that and I believe he was talking about using that more for long term storage/curing of large quantities. I grow single plants for personal use so there really isn’t a need for the contractor bag (I just go into the jar with a high quality hygrometer for the finishing touches). That was a bit of validation though, lol, as I had been using the brown bag method for a long while to slow my drying down during the winter months.
 
WrinkledNugSack said:
Yeah, I've done that as well, but I don't like all of the handling... I want to trim off all of the water leafs and then hang dry the plants whole... once they are ready, I prefer to pop them off of the stem/branches and let them fall into stainless steel goat's milk buckets (I find they work the best).

I also save the stems that are left over... I bundle them like twigs and if I need to regulate the moisture levels in the SS jugs (if I happened to have gotten the flower a tad dry) I do it with the stems... I've never gotten it so wrong that I've had to use green water leafs; but the cure is a different duck all together vs. drying.

I'll be good for RH this time around as the meters are showing 50% rh and that's close enough for me.
Click to expand...
To slow transpiration, if I had the space to dry whole plants I would almost certainly do that instead of trimming down to individual branches. Alas, I do not and try to leave as much stem as possible on there. I do end up using the stems as kindling for my solostove provided the youngsters aren’t milling around when I’m trying to get ‘er going 😂
 
Nice! Yeah, my humidity gets down into the low 40's at times in my basement, so I bought a cheap small humidifier to keep it around 55-60%. Luckily the temp consistently stays around 60. And you're right about what he was using it for.
 
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