🧑‍🌾 Harvest Tricks, Low Temp Cured Flower, and the Legacy to Legal Transition with ATG Acres

2:32AM Jan 28, 2025

Speakers:

Jordan River

Keywords:

harvest dry methods

low temp cure

ATG Acres

living soil

commercial farm

dry room

humidity control

air flow

bud hanging

dehumidification

ethylene gasses

trimming techniques

storage solutions

cannabis cultivation

grow cast podcast

Greetings growers from around the world. Jordan River here. Back at you with more grow cast surviving legalization. Today, we have a brand new guest, Aaron from ATG acres joins us. He's a good friend of mine. He's a very talented grower, and today he's here to talk about his story, a little bit about his farm and, most importantly, his harvest dry and cure methods. He produces some really good flour. I love listening to the unique techniques that he's come up with. I know you will love today's episode as well. Before we jump into it, though, shout out to AC infinity. That's right. Acinity.com, code grow cast one five to get your savings on the best grow gear that you can get your hands on. My favorite grow tents. They've got lights, fans, pots, scissors, everything you need. It's at AC infinity.com. They've got grow kits. If you need to get started growing it's the best way to get started, in my opinion, go grab a three by three grow kit, or a four by four grow kit. Use code grow cast one, five, and get that whole setup delivered to your door. Everything you need to get started, it's all there at AC infinity.com. Plus they've got lots of new and great items, like their new spray technology that they've released. They've got a new cloud forge humidifier. Now they have green lights that you can put in your tent, that you can use as work lights during your dark period. AC Infinity has it all. Code, grow, cast one, five at AC infinity.com. That's what you need to do. That's how you get the savings and grab the best tents in the game, the best fans in the game, and so much more. Thank you to our partners, AC infinity. Hello, podcast listeners, you are now listening to grow cast. I'm your host, Jordan River, and I want to thank you for tuning in again today before we get started, as always, I urge you to share this show, turn a grower onto growcast, tell them about the show and turn a smoke around to growing. That's the best way you can help us on our mission of overgrow. Make sure you're subscribed wherever you're listening to us. Follow along and hit up growcast podcast.com. For all the episodes, the membership, the seeds, the events, it's all there special. Thank you to the members. I appreciate you for making this all possible. My voice is recovering, still a little bit hoarse, but we are good to go. You know, I'm here for another awesome episode, and we have a new guest that's right, good friend of mine, definitely somebody who's well known cultivator in the cannabis space, and just very talented individual when it comes to living, soil, dry and cure methods and everything that has to do with this plant. We have another than Aaron from ATG acres on the line with us. What's up? Aaron, how you doing? What's up? Jordan, thanks for having me. Yes, in an official capacity, people have seen like, if they follow me on Instagram and stuff like they've seen that I toured your grow for, a minute there we did that tasting. So it's not like you're brand new to the Grow cast universe, but I do want to welcome you in an official capacity to the Grow cast podcast. My friend,

thank you for having me. I'm honored to be here. Been a fan for a long time. Obviously we've been friends for a minute. So I've always loved your content, and I love hanging out with you. So I think, you know, we always have productive conversations. So this will be

one of those. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Well, listen, it's long overdue. Let me be honest. You're a fantastic example of a cultivator. You have a tremendous passion for this plant. You've done something which I think a lot of people romanticize, or maybe even want to do, which is go from a real connoisseur, home grow cultivator, and scale that up to a licensed commercial farm, and still maintain that connoisseur quality. You truly do a good job of that with your brand ATG acres. Why don't we start with that story, though? What did get you into cannabis, into cultivation and then eventually bring you into the commercial side of things?

Yeah, that cannabis. My journey with cannabis started when I was young. I wouldn't recommend that to most kids out there, but I had a rough childhood, and it helped me cope with that. I was self medicating. I didn't really know it. I was just escaping reality, right? It really helped. And I just kept with it and found out that it grows, that you can actually grow this thing out of the ground. I I planted my first seed when I was in ninth grade in the woods, but died when it was about knee high. And I've had a passion ever since to try and get that right.

That's amazing. Try to stop that from happening. Yeah,

yeah, exactly. And we were in Florida then. And, you know, I finished out my college career in Florida, growing illegally there and doing my thing, and then I moved out to California, where I started to cut my teeth on the commercial side of things. That transition was colossal for anybody that's going from home grow to commercial. It's, it's unbelievably different, but the concepts just fold in on themselves. So you just keep, you just keep crawling down the rabbit hole, and essentially you get to a high quality commercial flower. And that's how we did it, is we just kept folding profits back onto the business and about. Backyard grow turned into a whole facility, and that's what we've got here in Oklahoma. So

cool, man. I've been to that facility. We'll have to post that on the YouTube. I think that our little videos were on Instagram, but I'll be sure to post that, repost that after this episode. Aaron, there's a lot that I could talk to you about. Like I said, you produce fine living soil flour at a commercial scale. We could talk about soil building. We could talk about microbes, we could talk about the market. But I wanted to start with this episode focusing on something else that you have a tremendous talent and passion for, and it's a highly requested topic. Let me tell you, Aaron, I get messages about this topic all the time. I'm talking about harvest, dry and cure. I'm talking about that last home stretch, that end zone play, where you've already driven all the way down the field. But if you can't get this last process right, you're You ain't getting those seven points, you're gonna have to settle for a field goal. It's really It's make or break at the end of the run, and you have a tremendous harvest, dry and cure. Uh, SOP, as they say, your process is very, very good. It's very, very impressive. So I mean, let's start right at the top. Let's just dig right into it. Man, I know, like I said, there's a lot that goes into growing the living soil flower and getting all the way there till harvest. But what recommendations that you have starting from harvest for an optimal AAA harvest, drying cure. So

one thing that's really important to remember, when you're growing the plant, you're only 50% in control, right? So when the plants in the soil, and it's it's taking in light and water and creating its own sugars, you're only doing half the job. You know it's doing the other half. Once you snap that snock, once you stock, snot, once you Snork the stock, yeah, baby, that's your job. Now you're you're at the helm 100% so true. So if you don't get it right, you're gonna take a plus bud and take it you're only gonna be able to take it down. You can't grow B plus weed and take it to a plus in the dry and cure process. The dry cure process is all about preservation. So we want to bring the bud to a dry phase without losing any of the volatile compounds that were grown so selectively during that that drive, as you discussed. So that's all starts with harvest and harvesting plants for drying is different from harvesting them, like when you're at home in your closet, and it doesn't really matter, you know, you can kind of put them wherever, or do whatever, but when you've got 100 plants, or 500 plants to take down, it's important to get it right. So the way that we do it is, we'll take the top we look at a whole plant. Looks like a Christmas tree. You take the very apical portion of the plant, the cola. And you take that about a foot, foot and a half long, and then when you hang that first branch, you'll hang it over the in a V shape, over whichever, whatever hanging system you use, you'll hang it over that first, whatever the the lowest branch was that'll then hang over that, that hanging mechanism, then every branch below that will be cut into a V so that it makes its own hook to hang from. That little tip saved me light years when I switched to commercial, you know, and our first harvest didn't go like that. We were whole plant harvesting, and that can be just a nightmare. And then the dynamics of the drying process when you hang the whole plant are different.

That is very true, and I don't knock the whole plant style, but it, like you said, it definitely changes things, and also, at scale, it's going to probably change things, because you're releasing all that moisture from like, a very central, concentrated point. I agree, how you chop the plant at harvest and then use those branches and little hanger hooks can really save a lot of time.

It does. It's just a little that's one of the little details that I wanted to share with your your listeners. Yeah, 100%

so what are you doing, as far as, like, your dry backs and things like that, before you chop? I'd like to know what your thoughts are on, on moisture before chopping. You

know, it's more strain dependent than dry back dependent. What we've seen is the really, really dense strains will will have a harder time drying we do dry backs. I think that it helps. So in living soil, we have, okay, let me start with synthetics. Most growers are familiar with salt, and in salt growing, you do a flush, right? Which is to say that you want to remove as many of those nutrient compounds from the soil as you can. But in living soil, we do it a little bit differently. We do, we do a lock out via dry baths, and that lock out oxidizes these compounds and prevents the plant from being able to uptake them. So it's a lot. It's very similar to a flush, but it's locking them instead of disappearing them. And in that way, we get more trichome production, more oil production, but relevant to the dry process, only if you over dry. Like, if your plants are dying on the vine, which we've done, we've done that a little bit. If they're dying on the vine, they'll be drier in the dry room and dry faster, for sure,

right? Did you what did you think of that when you were letting them go super, super long on a drought and die on the vine? What did that do to the quality? Went down, unfortunately. So there's, like, diminishing returns. There is what you're saying, absolutely, absolutely.

And I think it's important to water before you harvest. A lot of people will will dry for a couple of days before you harvest, but you want to remember that the plant is it's a cycle. So it's not like you have to dry back right before you harvest. You want to be drying back for the couple of weeks before you harvest, because that gives the plant time to produce those compounds. And you know, if I've got a water right before I harvest because the plants are droopy, I'll do it. I don't think it's it doesn't make that big of an impact, especially if your dry room is properly equipped with dehumidification, air conditioning and air flow. But

you're saying you you extend that that drought period, not so much as like a full drought, but you're lowering the water intake, making the environment drier and drier on average, triggering that lockout, triggering that senescence, triggering that end of life, all the things we want it to do, that's and then. And so if you have to water at the end, you're not dousing it. You might just give it a little water, but still, water, but still, you cut it. There's just

not that much in there. Yep, yep. And you know, living soil does maintain a lot of moisture, so we tend to have right moist soil all the time. Other than the top two inches is where that flexibility is. That

makes sense. That does make sense. Well, that is really cool, man. Let's just, uh, move along in the process here and say, we've got our buds hanged. Do you ever use dry baskets or things like that, or is it strictly hanging in the dark? Talk to me about that.

I don't touch baskets until the buds dry. The big reason for that it and I'll explain what we use baskets for. But the big reason for that is when you put a bud down, even if it's a soft surface and it's a fully wet bud, about 24 hours later, you'll see a flat side on that bud. That flat side is an is actually an indication of moisture collection. It's where the bud is not drying as quickly. You know, imagine you put your put a board against the wall, and you make a room really humid. The moisture is going to collect between that board and the wall. Yeah, it's essentially what's going on with your weed when you put it down on a surface, even if it's a mesh surface, and it's got holes in it, there's always some fabric touching it somewhere, and you're going to have an uneven moisture content, and that's why people will flip like, once or twice in the baskets and all that. But there's also a myth we should talk about. Back in the day, they used to say, you hang your buds because the THC, like, goes with gravity and falls into the weed. Do you remember that? Yes, that is an old school one I've read. It's so silly and it's not true. You know, the plant, I'll just put it this way. The plants turgid power, its cellular structure of, you know, the way it moves fluids through its xylem and phloem are far more powerful than gravity. I mean, way more powerful. So whatever the plant is doing upside down or right side up? Doesn't matter. It's not going to get more THC. That is a good point, yeah. However, harvesting when your lights first Come on, I should have mentioned this during the harvest portion, but harvesting right when your lights come on, there is research that supports the THC is slightly higher, anywhere from a percent to 2%

when the lights first Come on. Oh, wow. Yeah, no, I've heard that from a, just like, a traditional farming standpoint, right? Like people harvest stuff at dawn. Something about, like, sugar contents in berries are higher. Same thing with coffee. But I didn't know there were studies to show that the THC was that much higher.

That's really wild. Yeah, I'll have to, I'll send you the link when we get off, yeah,

I mean, that's, that's pretty substantial. You know what? I mean, raise it a percent or two. If you can get a couple of those little tricks in, suddenly you're, you're boosting five, 10% I like that. So

we do, we do hang buds upside down. We don't do whole plant hanging. We find really even moisture distribution under those conditions. I just wanted to clarify that, yeah. So we use a big trellis, like a traditional trellis that you would put, like a plastic trellis that you would put on your canopy. I hang that from my ceiling, and I hang my buds from that. And so we're not a state of the art facility by any means. I'm just a home grower with the keys to a Ferrari. Well, listen,

you do what works, right? Yes, I like that. Repurpose that trellis works great as a hang, a hang system. Let's get down to the meat and potatoes. Man, when you're whether you're keeping them bucked in baskets or hanging off at the trellis, what are you aiming for when it comes to temperature and humidity? I hear all sorts of stuff. All. And I know there's multiple ways to do it, but I want to know how you do it and achieve what's essentially a really good terpene reservation.

Cool, yeah, this is really important. So a lot of people will balk at the 6060,

you know, 60% humidity and 60 degrees Fahrenheit, but actually it is your upper threshold, so you never want it to get above 60% humidity or above 60 degrees in your dry room.

Jeez, I went into your dry room. It was like a cold room. Man. It was like yes, like the Arctic,

yes. And that's and that that. And if you don't want it too cold, either, we keep it between 50 and 60 degrees, which is a big fluctuation, but it's it's relatively challenging to maintain stable temperatures when I have a veg room that's 80 degrees on one wall and the flower room that's 70 degrees on the other wall, so it can get hard to balance. So it'll get really cold in there, sometimes, like 50 degrees. But we don't want it any colder, because that's the other side of things, where, you know, any of those temperature ranges are where compounds start to change, and once compounds start to change, you know, that's generally a bad thing. So that would be considered aging. If something is changing in a bad way, we call that aging, right? But if something is changing in a good way, we call that maturation. And we do like to see some terpenes mature, because they provide better flavors, which is what drive and cure is all about, right?

And maybe some cannabinoids do a little bit of changing in that cure. That's a really good point, though. We we categorize it into two different categories, because we want shit. But essentially, you're right. If it's bad, it's aging and spoiling, and if it's good, then it's curing. Yes,

that's right. And we want cured, mature weed. We don't, you know, we don't want it wet. So in terms of your temperature that's going to impact your temperature and humidity are very relevant. So, like, they impact each other a lot. So you got to try and keep your temperature below 60 degrees. I think this is a good segue to get into the equipment thing. Yeah,

100% because a lot of people struggle with that. Aaron, it's like, how do I get there? And you can in a home setup, even if you're if you are a little bit ingenious, but talk to me about the equipment that you have to use to achieve a 55 degree humid. 55 degree Fahrenheit

dry. Yeah. So most ACS, their lowest set point is 62 degrees. You'll get some of them that are 60 degrees, but they're not even going to get the room to 60 degrees. They're going to get it to 6162 which is fine for your average home grower, but if you're looking to keep that a plus, a plus, for, say, six months, then you've got to do something to your AC. You've got to hack it. Mr. Cool makes a unit. It's called the cool bot. It's a low ambient temperature modifier, and any of the HVAC specialists that might be listening will be familiar with these, because they're pretty common to drive temperatures lower when you don't want to use a refrigeration unit. But they're 400 bucks. It's got a thermostat that plugs into the AC, and this is only good for window units and portable ACS and mini splits, so no central HVAC for these right? It plugs into the fins of your intake on your AC, and it it will prevent it from freezing over. Then it hacks your thermostat that's built into your AC, and it heats it and it tricks your AC into thinking that it's actually warmer in the room than it is that's crazy, and it will drive the the system lower. So you have to oversize your AC, and I can send you. We can put a couple links in the description if you want. I can send you the Mr. Cool, the link for their AC sizing thing. You have to buy the right brand of AC. You have to buy the it has to be, like, two or three times the size, because

they don't want to overload a machine and break it right. Yeah. And

we've gone through three ACS, one per year using the cool bot. I'll say that it does run the machines hard, yes, but we undersized our ACs. I've finally got a proper sized AC in there, and I'm hoping to make it last. But when you when you think about it, the AC being a sacrificial item, over a year and you've spent 130 bucks on it, not a big deal, right? Or 400 you know, if you got to buy a nicer when you spend 400 bucks on it, or, you know, it's kind of worth it to keep your quality up.

I mean, listen, man, I've seen people do grows on all sorts of budgets, shoestring budgets, or, like you said, they're wondering, how can I take this up a notch? How in the world can I get a cold room so I can finally make that top quality rosin? You know, saving up for a freeze dryer, saving up for a for a cool bot and an AC. These are the things that that the people who want to really take it this far are. Are going to do. I love the honest review on the cool bot. I should try to get, like, a promo code or something with these guys. They

are not into our industry. It looks like it. They don't like us very much. They certainly have helped me, even though I said, like, I called them and said, What do I do about this issue? I said, I'm a cannabis girl. Said, Okay, just do this. But if you go to their website, it's their parameters you'll look at are like, wine cellar, yeah, meat locker, and there's another one, but yes, it's that 50 to say, hey, yeah, this

is ATG meat calling my me. My meat locker cooler is broken. I need someone out here ASAP.

My Turkish tomato plants are suffering Exactly

Okay. So you, you put this freaking cool bot thing to run the shit out of your AC to drop it below 60, that's what you do. That's that's the secret. That's the secret, dude. Now let me play devil's advocate. Even though I love a slow and low dry How long does this take if you're drying flour at 55 degrees, doesn't that extend to the dry period? What are your What are your timelines like?

It takes about 10 days on average, but that's about the same time we saw when we were hanging whole plant and when we were running warmer temperatures. And there's a lot to be said for the way you hang your plants and and even more important than that is air flow. But the way you hang your plants essentially affects air flow. You don't want to have any any high winds on your buds. I'm sure most of your listeners know this kind of stuff, but just go over the basics. You don't want any high winds on your buds. You want high air flow not touching your weed, and indirectly, kind of bouncing at your weed, right?

You don't want too much of that direct fan stress. Do you is that because you don't like what it does to the trichomes, or what it does to dry or both,

it unevenly dries it, so it'll be more dry on the outside and really wet on the inside, right? So let's jump into what to do when that happens, sure, and really anytime. So like part of our SOPs, one of our biggest secrets is at about seven days, six or seven days when the leaves start getting crunchy, but the bud is still soft and the stems aren't quite snapping yet. You'll take all the branches off, pile them up about three inches tall, in the same orientation on some sort of clean piece of like tarp, like on a table. This is going to sound really rudimentary, but what we're doing is consolidating the moisture loss. So we want the moisture to escape more slowly, and we also want it to escape into each other. So by putting the bud close together, the nugs on the bottom will receive the most moisture, and after 24 hours, you'll flip that pile, and then the top buds will be on the bottom, and the moisture, and what you'll find after 48 hours of being on the table, they will be perfectly evenly dry. Every nug you touch will be just as dry as the nug next to it, and the nug down the line.

That is interesting. And this is uncovered and just in the same environment,

you can cover it if you've taken it a little bit too far on the rack, like if you've hung it for a little bit too long, you can cover it to to eat, to slow it down further, and then from there, you'll put it in a I prefer a turkey bag. I know people boast about the jar cure, but if you look at the physics of of how we cure cannabis, you actually want as little oxygen exposure to the cannabis as possible. Let's say you have, you know, your one gallon mason jar, and you fill it up 80% 20% of that is oxygen. But when I put my weed in a turkey bag, once it's fully dry and it's not going to get deformed from being pressed against other nugs. And I pull as much of the air out and I seal it. That's five to 10% oxygen. Your weed is going to oxidize or age much, much slower, because we want this maturation to happen in the absence of oxygen, because oxygen oxidates and it degrades.

And so that's similar to why you do this kind of piling method,

exactly, yeah. And the closer you can Yep, the more you can slow things down at the end, the better. So just to jump back, when you first bring plants into your dry room, never let it get above 60% humidity. And so I usually get my dehumidifier set to 55% and then the top threshold fluctuation will be about 59 or 60% any higher, you're risking bug rot. So

when you're you're seeing people say 6060, in your mind, you're thinking 60 degrees Fahrenheit, maximum. I. Actually want to see that number a little bit lower, and then also 60 degrees relative humidity as my ceiling, I don't mind seeing 55 at all. I'll be fine. You. You don't want to risk any rot going above 60. I think that's that's right, pretty solid and interesting.

Sop, for the first two days, don't worry about driving your your humidity pretty low. You know, 45 55% is fine. It's not going to affect the weed. But after two days, put your make your top threshold 60 however you do that with your equipment, make your top threshold 60% humidity. That's super important.

That makes sense too, because I've seen other people say, you know, dry, get that humidity, or allow that humidity to be lower in the beginning, because the plants losing so much water so much faster. Yeah, right. And then as the plant is losing less water, you can kind of, you're kind of reflecting that same methodology in your process. But I will say the fact that you're getting a 10 day dry on this makes me think that you are doing a significant and like you said, long term reduction in water before the harvest. That's what that reflects to me, because I because if I'm watering heavy right up until the end, that 52 degree dry is going to take, like two and a half weeks. So I think that might be pointing to your drought, your pre harvest drought,

which I like it probably does. I think it has a lot to do with proper dehumidification in your dry room, especially for the first few days, you know, first week or so. Because we did see, you know, dude, I spent 10 years growing on the Hill in California, we were drying in 90 degree sheds where it was anywhere from 30% humidity to 90% humidity, yeah, and I saw the physics play out in such dynamic ways. I started to understand how, how to dry weed effectively, quickly, while keeping the the terpene profile. I mean, when it's 90 degrees and 30% humidity, you've got to check your dry room every half an hour to make sure that it's not getting too dry. And then when it does, you do the same fucking thing. You pull all those buds down, you put them on a piece of TARP, and you cover them up, and you just slow it down, right?

Because, like, there's, there's changes that are going on. I would love for you to talk about those like dynamics that you that you saw occurring, and just how we should think about, like water moving through these plants as we as we drive them in these spaces.

Yeah, that's a great point. So there's a couple of like physics processes to consider during the drying curing process, there's thermal dynamics, which is, you know, temperature gradients. And then you have fluid dynamics, which is, you know, we've already talked the thermal dynamics thing, but the fluid dynamics is the the movement of moisture. Now we know moisture wants to balance. We know that gaseous moisture wants to find balance right it wants to fill the space evenly, and right now it's trapped in the weed. And because the space at the edge of the weed, so you picture a bud at the very center is wet, and at the outside it's dry, the water is going to try its hardest to move to the outside of the bud, right? And that doesn't happen during the first few days. That happens at the end of your cure. And in fact, that is the cure. What the cure is, is bringing the moisture from the inside to the outside and then releasing it from the outside of the bud, right? Because

when you chop the plant now there's no more water coming in. So like you said, the outside is drying, kind of acting as a vacuum from the inside. Yes,

that's exactly right. It's attempting to suck the water out of the inside to balance, you know, the pressure, the pressure, right? The fluid dynamics. And so that's going to have a big impact, or rather, the structure of your weed, is going to actually have a really big impact on how the water leak, right? And so if you have and this, I've, we just experienced this, I harvested two strains on the same day, and one of them was a mutant type genetic it's the exoneration, which you've tried. It's really fire, but it grows. It's a mutant. It's, well, the number 18 is a mutant, and it's the sister fino, and it's got these rigid, flat stocks that hold a shit ton of moisture.

Whoa, like a faciated stock or whatever. It's partially

fat. It almost it looks faciated, kind of, but it's, there's no faciation happening in the buzz, wow, just in, yeah, yeah. So Whoa, that stock holds an unbelievable amount of moisture. If I harvest a big branch and hang it by the branch. Inch. Doesn't matter how big the bud is, that bud takes two weeks to dry. If I cut that stock in half and hang just the little bud and don't leave like a foot of stock, it dries in a normal amount of time. So clearly the stock size has a lot to do with how much moisture needs to work its way out of the bud. Wow. And then you have the physics of the actual butt itself. And the denser, this is a very straightforward correlation, the denser the weed, the longer it takes for that moisture to leave, and the harder it is for it to leave

right? It's like water passing through a more dense filter. Takes holinger to pass that through that filter,

there's a bunch of skinny straws. It's got to make its way through. Totally. Yeah. Okay, let's just put a pause on

the curing for a second. The grow cast grand fino hunt is on. You can win $1,000 by growing the winning plant. All you gotta do is become a member. I'll even refund your join fee and get in on the best hunt ever in the cannabis industry. We have the grow cacid co grand fino hunt going down. It starts may 25 you need to be a member to grab yourself a $20 fino hunt box. You grow the box, you flower out the strains, you take cuttings of each one, and if you are the lucky winner, you will win a huge prize pack, including $1,000 grand prize. We're also giving out a ton of prizes along the way, so come and join us. Here's all you need to know. You need to be a member. Grow cast, podcast.com/membership, sign up right away. I'm refunding all new members join fees so you can go ahead and join, and you'll get your $15 back immediately and enjoy 30 days free once the boxes go on sale may 25 use your special code to get them for 20 bucks. Enjoy the seeds. Hunt through as many as you can. It's 12 regular photo periods. You have until July 1 to pop them to officially be part of the competition. And then you can win some massive prizes. Check it out. Is it grow, cast, podcast.com/hunt, all the information is there. It all goes live may 25 you have until July 1. Don't miss out on this amazing fino hunt. I'm going to be giving away dozens and dozens of prizes and $1,000 cash. You don't want to miss it. Go to grow cast podcast.com/membership, sign up today. Look for the updates. It all happens may 25 at 4:20pm Central Standard Time. I hope to see you there. We got the best community around. I know you're gonna love it. Shout out to rise O Rich. Shout out to all the team members. Stay tuned for the amazing grow cast seed co grand phenot, I do want to talk about that exoneration that you grew.

Shout out to Seattle chronic seeds, right? Yes, sir, rob the man.

He's been on the show a couple of times, and I think that he may have mentioned the exoneration in one of those episodes. I just gotta say, Man, that is such an impressive cross. The one that I got to experience a lot was just like, it's everything I love about an OG turned up to 11 and adding complexity. Thank you. Really, really great stuff. Like, it's just earthy and sweet and gassy. It's perfect in every way.

Yeah, dude, he's got, it's a cross of Gary Payton OG Kush, breath 2.0 and root beer Rolex. And it's got notes of each one of those, I think, yeah. So we took it so that exoneration 18 is the more Sativa dominant Pheno we took it 13 and a half weeks. All of the other phenos are nine, 910, weeks, and so the flavor is more dynamic. The buds are a little smaller, and the density is through the roof. It's unbelievably like, right? Rocky,

yeah, that's what you want. Especially out of stuff with that lineage. You also did a number on the truffle cake. Number two that rich had selected found its way into your hands. Really good job on that one man that is one of my favorite cuts of all time, honestly. And it's won our cultivators cup, and I've had it grown by all these different members, and I've had it grown by rich and dude,

you guys did, you know, you guys, you guys did that. I just grew what Adam gave me, and it was phenomenal. Dude, like, well,

shout out. Yeah, rich hunted that from an in house pack, and he ended up using it in cookie Truffle Shuffle and tectonic truffle and, like some of our greatest hits, built off of that strain. So very good job on that truffle cake as well.

Yeah, I got to commend him and you and in house on on that one for

sure, very good stuff. Okay, so, yeah, we're back back to curing secrets. Man, where do you see people going wrong? Where do they mess up in this timeline? Obviously, not cold enough is one that I'll point out. I'm guilty of that. Everybody's kind of guilty of that. And when I say going wrong, I know I'm there's lots of different ways to cure, but we're looking at your style right now. Where would you tell people to do things a

little bit different? I think it all starts with the philosophy of understanding that you now have full control, that you can't just it's no longer just let the plant do what it's going to do. You know, no, it's dead. It's dead. You are everything it is. Literally breathing its last breaths. So that's that philosophy shift is important. Keeping it cold, like you said, is obviously critical. Think about your think about your situation in terms of, what would I do if I had infinite amount of money, and then you just try and cut corners to make that happen.

Oh, I love that advice. That's great. Go from the dream grow and then work your way back as far as you need to go to fit your budget. That's it. Even if it's free, it's like, what can we do to get as close to that?

Yeah, listening to this podcast is our people is going to be people's number one freest option, damn, right.

We can find us every Monday. Yes, sir, that's great. I also liked what you had said when, when we spoke about people not looking at their room in terms of micro climates, how it's like, Oh, I've got this one reading, right? And you just kind of assume that, like, the whole room is that? And that's not the case. Dude, there's hot spots and dry spots. Can you talk about that a

little bit good point? Dude, yes, I did want to talk about that that. So it's a good point to bring up our buddies at Pulse grow. Oh yeah, they make a phenomenal sensor. They've got three different models. They've got your your basic home grower model, which we use one of on the hot side of our dry room. Our dry room is only 160 square feet. Flower room is 600 square feet. We're a small facility, right? But we still have multiple sensors in the dry room. I have a sensor at the AC, I have a sensor on the ground next to the AC. I have a sensor at the ceiling next to the AC. I have a sensor where the weed will dry, and then I have a sensor on the at the hottest part of the room. And all that's on an easy to access dashboard from pulse, and I can pull that up, Bada, bing bada, boom, and I have all of my data points and I can say, okay, my air flow is bad because on the hot side of the room, it's 64 degrees, and on the cold side it's 56 degrees. So I need to get in there and move the fan. I need to turn on my my exhaust. I need to do something. I have a research fan in there, that sort of auxiliary that I turn on when the ceiling sensor is too warm, because I have a 16 foot tall ceiling, so the air will stratify and it'll get really warm up top and really cold on the bottom. So we'll use a six inch research fan from AC infinity with ventilation going to the ground with a carbon filter on the ceiling. It sucks air, cold air, from the ground, and pushes it out onto the ceiling, and cold air obviously falls back to the ground. So it's a cycle, right? You push the cold air up and let it go back around.

That's a really good way to put it, which is you need to be creating like a circulatory cycle. Wolf Man has described it sometimes as like a vortex, which is, that's it. If two fans are pointing against each other, you create turbulence. That's not any sort of cycle or or vortex. It's they're just going to hit each other and it's going to create turbulence, right? That's kind of not what you want.

And in a dry room, you actually want a three dimensional vortex. In your flower room, it's just a two dimensional vortex of like, you know, spinning in a circle exactly around the room. But in your dry room, you want to circle around the room on the sides and a circle from top to bottom, yes. And so in that way, it's like a three dimensional

that is exactly right. And the other thing that you pointed out is airflow is kind of the cure for these hot spots, if you find and you can even feel them sometimes. Man, you can feel in a dry room, if you got some big bushy plants, and you make it into the back corner and you can, like, feel that it's more humid back there. That's a bad sign, first of all, and the cure is more airflow, like you said, whether that means adding an oscillating fan or maybe bucking down your plants more exactly, or removing more foliage, right? It works on both sides of that equation, however you want to get

there. And good point, always remove your fan leaves before harvest. So any anything that doesn't have trichomes on it, pull it off before harvest, because there's there's a couple of things that'll happen in the dry room that will discourage you from wanting to leave fan leaves on. Yes. Number one, make sure we taste like, Hey, I've experienced this numerous times. A lot of people balk at it, but it is real. It is absolutely real. The other thing is, it slows the dry time, so sometimes you can leave fan leaves on, on your lowers. So like, if there's a fan leaf coming off of the lower part of the plant where there's a smaller nug, and you want that nug to dry a little slower, because, you know it's going to dry faster because it's so small, it's interesting, you can leave the leafs on in those circumstances, and leaving a few leafs on is not going to make your weed taste like, Hey, have. Adding 30 pounds of fan leaves in your dry room while your weed is drying, will big

green water leaves, especially the green weed. It's a lot of people point to the chlorophyll that causes that right, which, which is really just a thin skin pigment on the outside of that green leaf. That's right. So remember, too, listener, if you harvested a purple plant and you said, hey, I'll dried it with all the leaves on, and it didn't make my well, maybe it was because there was less chlorophyll. Because less chlorophyll

is dominated by anthocyanin, and the cyanine is is different from chlorophyll in it, it actually, it does have a it does have a weird taste, but it's not grassy, grassy or, like, spicy, right? Like, how chlorophyll can be, right?

So, you know, I think it depends. But I've never suggested people leave those, those fan leaves on. And, like I said, we encourage all types of growing here and all sorts of stuff. But even in our dry guide, it's like, I like to pluck those fan leaves off when the plant is still in its pot or in bed,

and because it encourages senescence. When you remove those leaves at their abscission point, you're signaling to the plant it's time to finish. It's just another senescence encouragement, right? I

totally agree. And it seems a lot easier, too. Some people will harvest and then turn the plant upside down and then try to remove the leaves. And it's very difficult,

it is. And people think it's easier, but it's like, no, you know, you may have two hands available if you hang it from a hook, but you're racing the clock then to get the rest of your harvest done. So why not? Why not just remove the leaves a week or two before harvest, encourage senescence, and then when it comes time to harvest, they're ready to go, you might have to pull a couple of leaves off that you missed at the center of the canopy or something earlier.

That's amazing. You seem to have a really nice senescence strategy. We'll definitely have to talk cultivation strategies on another episode. Cool, but um, what else before we get into trimming and stuff? What else on this kind of drying, hanging curing phase?

So we talked a lot about the chemical compound maturation, fine lines and stuff like that, but ultimately, that's our that's our goal is to preserve these volatile things and even something as as benign as brushing up against plants, like while you're harvesting, you know, you got a careless worker, and they kind of bang into things. Don't touch the buds. Yeah, hands off, yep, because you're gonna see it. Man, I have taken a touched bud under a microscope and seen kinked trike heads, and it does funny shit. It really does.

You're like, what the and on the plant? Maybe one thing. But after harvest, completely unacceptable, or is it never touch the boats?

Basically, not right. Before harvest, they'll, they'll grow right, you know? But it's, uh, it becomes a it becomes a flower. It really does, yep, at that point, it's fragile, you know. And treating your your harvest and dry process as like OCD as you can is really the best advice I could give somebody like, really be obsessive about every little detail. You know, those details, are they each detail makes up half a percent in quality, generally speaking, I

like that. So you need, do you need to pay attention to 200 different things in your dry Yeah, I agree. I think it's actually a little bit more intensive. As you said. You know, when you're growing, the plant is doing a lot of the stuff on its own, and so I'm a very hands off type grower, but I can't go against the advice of of really thinking down your dry room and making sure that you're not taking a really delicious, stinky plant and then putting it into a system that loses quality that's that's really not what you want after investing so much time and money into your run. Yeah.

And do you have any experience with those pure boxes, I forgot what they're called, like, cure now, or something.

Oh, herbs now dryer, or the Canna trawl, or those, yeah, those two. There's a couple different ones. So, like, the herbs now, dryer is like a dehydrator, and that dries your bud. And I was, like, pretty shocked and, like, impressed. I thought it was gonna, like, not be so good. I thought I was gonna, like, ruin it, you know what I mean? But, um, but I wouldn't say that. It was, like, mind blowing. It wasn't like, as good as as what you do. I feel like, I agree, the can of troll is different, though. Isn't that a curing one? I've, I've seen great cures come out of a can of

troll. Yeah, I have two. And that's why I'm conflicted about this. April shared her Chimera with me, and it was fire and it was dried. It had been sitting like six months in the Canna trawl. Yeah, and it's nice. I didn't understand how it was so good. And it was like 70 degrees in your Canna troll. That is

interesting. I don't know what kind of voodoo magic they work. Canna troll Not, not a sponsor. I don't think I've spoken to those people, but I've seen good. Product coming out of a can of troll, like you said, having cured in there, I don't think it's a drying chamber. I could be wrong about that, but I think it's just a storage thing, isn't it? But if it's really, really nice, whatever it is,

I like it. I don't think it's like, it's not like something I would outfit a commercial facility with. But for your home grower, you know, I think that could be something worth investigating. If you're trying to take it to that, that top 5% you've got to do it in the corners you don't want to cut are with the temperature? Yeah,

exactly. Temperature is the biggest enemy. That's exactly right. I totally agree with that. What do you think about storage long term, though? Are you like straight into jars. Guy, have you messed around with Grove bags? If you know you're going to have it for more than a year, do you freeze it? What are your thoughts?

I generally do we, we don't like keep a lot of product on hand.

You don't keep anything more than a year because you sell it. Oh, good, no. Yeah, it's,

it's, it's gone, and as soon as it's, down in 60 seconds. But, you know, we, we had a seed run, and some of them weren't good enough to bring to market. So we're, they're still sitting in the dry room, but, uh, it took about a year for the quality to start to degrade, right? But things changed dramatically, so at like so let's take the Anthony Bourdain, which is a Seattle chronic seeds creation. For instance, it's a real garlicky umami flavor. It's got mustard and cheese, and it's got all those, you know, rancid flavors. When it first came off the plant, it had straight like mustard, cheese flavors. And about three months in, I'm pulling the bags out, and all of a sudden it's all garlic, like every bag was suddenly garlic. And then six months came around, and some of those garlics were still garlicky, but some of them had actually started to just degrade in general, like, just didn't have, it was a low frequency, as I think you coined that,

yes, yeah. I like that low end, low end,

yeah. And then at the year mark, almost everything started to have started to degrade and have that sort of like, you know, just that nose that reminds you of old weed. Yes,

absolutely, I know exactly what you're talking about. It's like old popcorn or something. It smells like, yeah, kind of oxidized and cooked and buttery. Yeah, it's got that red look and totally but no, yes, I every time you bring up these dang strains and these examples, I want to go off on like, a whole tangent, but I got to enjoy that Anthony Bourdain and all the different finos at the tasting. Yes, so cool man, to sit in that cold room with all, all of that different stuff all laid out and labeled and and you took the notes very, very seriously, and me and Rob getting to try those strands. That was a really awesome day. Yeah, you

guys were a big, big part in picking keepers. You know, although it made it I now have four keepers of Anthony Bourdain, because we all had our own favorites. But that's a good thing. Suppose

that is a good that's that reflects well on Rob, is that just cross has so many different finos that come out, we couldn't decide

which one thing, everything I hunted from him. I have multiple finos, everything. Yeah, that's

awesome, dude. Yeah. Well, we should all get on a grow cast TV together or something. Just fuck around. That'd be fun. That would be a ton of fun. Yeah, we'd have a lot. Listen, I there's a couple more points here. I think we got time. All right, let's get into trim. Do you fuck around with it? Obviously, you don't do like a wet trim or anything like that. You hand trim, trim bags. What are we working with?

Let's start with the first question, we don't wet trim. God, help anyone who wet trims, there are ethylene gasses, just like in your bananas. When you bring them home, if you leave them in a bag, they'll ripen faster because of the release of ethylene gasses, and if the fruit is exposed to said ethylene gasses, it ripens faster. We know that that's how they ripen tomatoes and apples on the road. Now, same thing applies to cannabis, but there aren't any studies about this. I've looked but when, when you cut a plant down, it is alive for 24 to 48 hours. So it's still doing shit. It's still releasing the gasses that it releases when it gets cut while it's in the ground, right? So, like, if you cut a branch off, ethylene gas comes out and it and then once it's off gas, it's released. And it's not a problem. But if you take a plant, cut it down, release those ethylene gasses, and then lock it in your dry room, that's going to create hay flavor, right? So we always advise, anytime I do consultation or anything like that, wet trim is a big no no. Also it makes it harder your scissors get gummier. So dry trim all day. The second part of your question was, straight to What did you say? Straight to bad? I don't

know. I think, I think I asked, um, hand trim? Oh,

I was going to explain how we use baskets. So once the cannabis is done curing. So it's already had a couple of openings in the bag. So usually put it in the put it in the turkey bag, and then we will open it one or two more times for 24 hours. And then once it's fully dry, once it's blocked off of the the branches get poured into a basket. It's a it literally is a Garbage Pail with a mesh galvanized finish. And you can get them on Dollar Tree's website. And you get a small one and a big one, and you put about a half quarter pound to a half pound in there. You put the the small basket on top of the big basket, you squeeze them together, and you roll it for about a minute. That's going to remove 75% of the trim. No way. Yeah, oh yeah, the end, and it doesn't damage dude. This was taught to me by a professional trimmer here in Oklahoma. Shout out, pineal gland or Tristan. He's, he's one of the best, best trimmers I've ever met, and he shared this technique with me, and it changed everything for

me. I hold on. I just got to break this down. This is essentially a homemade trim bin, or, like, or like, homemade twist bag, yeah, yeah. Bag, good call. Yeah. Like a homemade Twister made out of $2 store baskets. Yes, sir. Let's get the pictures of exactly the baskets you're talking about so we can post them. Yeah, I'll do that. That's awesome, dude. That's sick. Yeah,

they're just these. They've got, you know, quarter inch or maybe half inch mesh holes in them, so all the trim, the buds kind of bash into each other and break the the the leaves off, yeah. And if, if you do this at 65 degrees, you're screwing your weed up. You do this at 55 degrees, everything will be pretty maintained. You're not knocking heads off. It's crazy, man, I love that. And then from there, it gets poured into the trim bin. Everything is hand trimmed and immediately put into we use a zip zag bag. So that's a brand of, oh, yeah, I know those. They're like, the zip

zags. Yes, I got it. The best big ass bag of those. They're like, how would you describe them? They're like, they're like, a better version of zip locks, basically,

yeah, they're like, lots of steroids. There's zip lock. Meeks meets Turkey bag. You know, it's a turkey bag with a zipper,

yeah, and like, the plastic is thicker, the sizes are bigger.

It's so the plastic is thicker, it has wider seals, so that air doesn't escape. The zipper is heavy duty. I get the black bags because I know they're all black. Oh, there's only one that's a half pound bag. It's what we sell our weed in, actually, when we go to dispensaries. I presented in these black zip zag bags, the gold sticker, oh, shit. And it's, it's the best I did a side by side with jar and Turkey bag and zip lock, which, that was a waste of time. Yeah, zip locks. I don't know how this is true. I don't know why, why this is true, but like, you could seal a zip lock, squeeze it, no air comes out, and a week later, the whole room smells like weed. Somehow the smell got out, somehow the meat is being degraded. It's

the worst. It's like worse. You could put it under water, and it's watertight, yeah? But somehow it's making your weed worse. It's degrading all the all the trichomes stick to the sides of the zip lock. That's my big push for For You audience members, my big call to action, ditch the zip lock. Never again, yeah, never forget. Never again.

Yeah. And the gaseous compounds are are smaller. You know, these atoms are smaller than water. So they're, this is my speculation. They're fitting through the gaps in the plastic, in the plastic,

yeah, or the seal, the shitty seal,

yeah, where the where they although the air can't escape, these smaller compounds can. And as we know, as we discussed, gaseous compounds. Want to balance. They want to find where there's less of them. And so that's what they're doing. They're just escaping, like, if you super critical, if you take helium to super critical temperatures, it goes through glass. Wow. So it's like that, just like

that, baby, yeah, big bag is going to come after me. Zip lock is going to hear this and be like, we gotta. We you need to cease and desist. Zip Zags,

got your back. Yeah, good coffee. They sent me a bunch of stuff just to trial. And since I've been purchasing I'm not sponsored by them or anything. I just really like them. No,

I love it, dude. I like all the recommendations today that these are some really cool little tech. Pieces that you have, from the cool bot to your talk with homemade trimming. I love the fucking trim methods and the bucking down pre snap period. You just you have a lot of really specific tips and tricks that that clearly you've implemented because you've seen results. So I like to hear about this sort of thing, man. Get into the nitty gritty of people's different styles so that my listeners might be able to try it at home and see if it works in their setup. You know, that's really, ultimately what we're trying to do here. If someone you know hears something from this, if you do implement a cool bot, if you do change your style this way or that way, and it benefits you, make sure to write us and tell us that you heard on this episode. A good tip from ATG, yeah. And if

i And if anybody has any questions while they're doing this, I love to help, like I have a consultation business that's like, I go help big grows and I help them turn things around. But on my Instagram, I answer free questions all day, and I really enjoy it. So if anybody does have any follow up questions, feel free to DM me. I'm at ATG acres on Instagram, ATG acres.com is the website you can send me an email

through there. Hey, go follow right now everybody at ATG acres on Instagram, show them some love for this episode. Go hit a follow on Instagram. Shoot them a message on the website. ATG acres.com go support him in Oklahoma. Where can my oklahomas? Go try out your flowers. Since I hyped it up so much, you really won't regret it, guys. I mean, let's be honest. ATG, Oklahoma is a hit or miss market. There's some really, really bad flower out there, and then there's some really, really good stuff, like yourself, some real living soil legacy cultivators who are doing it right. Man, so where can people find you in Oklahoma?

And that is so true. Man, there are, it is a total there is no in between. You either have your your garbage mids, or your really top quality, true dude. So weird. So we're, we're mostly in Oklahoma City and Tulsa and Chico Shay. So any boutique dispensary, any craft dispensary, I'll start listing some of them is gonna carry our stuff. And if they're not, they they do from time to time. So it's mosaic, Kush hills, great barrier, reefer. These are all OKC, Oklahoma City locations, kind connection. They're going to kill me. I'm going to forget a few.

I put you on the spot here. There's no way you'll be able to remember all of them, there's a there's probably follow ATG Hi. Always post drops, yeah,

I always post drops and and then in Ninna call. We've got smoking 19 shout out to smoking nineteens That that is one of the best little shops that you'll ever visit. April runs the show there. She's our really good friend.

Couple of grow cast members. Shout out, I love those girls, dude. And let

me just say, while before we finish, thank you to the Grow cast community. Thank you, Jordan. Y'all, you are creating a wonderful thing. All the people that that rally around you truly believe in and what we're doing with this plant, the passion the community, it's all there. It's so real in your community. I'm grateful and honored to be welcomed into it. That makes

that means a lot, man. And I also want to say, before we wrap it up, that guac off was awesome. We had a guacamole competition. We're going to take that one on the road. You guys tell me where we should go next. We absolutely love the guacamole competition with great barrier reefer. ATG was there. The funniest moment of the night is, ATG was like, Yeah, I don't like guacamole, like, you guys got a judge. So everyone's eating guacamole for six hours. And I see ATG, after the long day of vending and smoking with everybody and hanging out, he comes over the table and he's like, he's looking tired, you know, he's all exhausted from working. And he just looks and he sees that there's salsa on the table. And you go, you literally, out loud, you go, Oh, Holy fuck. Someone brought salsa. Thank God, salsa. I was just so funny. I don't know why that's hilarious, dude. Everybody

was like, just in guac. Oh, this is so wonderful. And I'm like, this sucks. I don't And then somebody brought salsa, and it was two different brands, and I was like, Oh, I'm gonna judge

the salsa that was awesome next time, we'll have a salsa category, and we'll do it again in Oklahoma sometime, dude. So thank you, man, thank you for being an awesome cultivator, an awesome educator, and thanks for hanging out at the guac off. That was so much fun. Man,

likewise, dude. Thank you for all you do for the community, all the, you know, the selective breeding, and you know, I really enjoy that truffle cake. And, of course, I enjoy your company. And you know, you're welcome out to the farm. How might happen? Do do a grow cast event or something, yeah,

or a tour or something. Next time down there, we'll kick it, man. Thank you. I appreciate that. Aaron, let's do it. Yeah, all right, everyone one more time at ATG acres. Go give them a follow. That's also the website. You know what to do. We're at growcast on Instagram, and then grow cast podcast.com, you know the drill. That's all for today. Everyone I thank you for tuning in. This is ATG acres and Jordan River signing off, saying, Be safe out there and grow smarter. That. Is our show. Thank you so much for tuning in, everybody. I appreciate you. Thank you to Aaron the grower. Remember, we got the grand fino hunt going down for members. It starts may 25 get in membership, grow, cast podcast.com/membership, like I said, all new members getting their join fee refunded so you can check it out for free for 30 days and get that phenom box for just 20 bucks. Super excited about that hunt. I can't tell you all the stuff we have planned for it, so many different games and, you know, mini games inside the hunt and contests along with a huge grand prize winner. So hope to see you there, everybody. But if you're just tuning into the show, I appreciate you listening. Got some really good stuff coming down the pipe for you, that's all for everybody. Be safe out there, see you next time bye.

God help anyone who wet trims you?