"I didn’t know if there was a SPECIFIC range to maximize long term potency"
If you do enough searching , you will come up with a range of about 55-66. Pick any number and you will find someone who can tell you why that is the best number. They are not right or wrong, it is the RH they prefer. Each number comes with a small trade-off as you have found.
"Maybe I am overthinking it"
It is a valid question that every grower asks when they wonder what to do for long term storage. I think we all want to store our medicine
perfectly! There have been many threads on this subject and we’ve never come to a conclusion of a perfect number RH. Only perfect personal preferences. I chose 62 after my first grow. Not being sure of how to store it perfectly I tried an experiment. Jar A – 55RH. I wet manicured buds. They were perfect looking and beautiful, just like you see in magazines. Jar B – 62RH. Buds were put in jar straight from dried plant. Not a single fan leaf was removed. Jars were stored side by side for 3 months. A friend stopped by and we compared jars. The smells were completely different. Jar A – the trimmed buds had some exposure to oxygen due to being trimmed and had lost some smell and taste when smoking. Even a bit of potency. Pot was no longer sticky. Jar B – need to be trimmed before smoking. After trimming, pot was still sticky and stuck to fingers, scissors, etc. Smelled and tasted much better and was more potent. I was sold on 62. It is perfect – for me.
The trade-off, of course, is the medicine needs to be set out earlier and must be trimmed before smoking. Many people have posted that this is an impossibility, they need to be able to smoke the medicine immediately out of the jar. That is fine, 62 is clearly not the perfect number for them. Whatever your choice, in the end, the amount of work is exactly the same. The medicine must be taken out of the jar and at some point, the buds must be trimmed. When you decide to do this is a personal preference. The amount of work is exactly the same, just done at different times.
After joining this site, I was pleased to learn that I was doing it pretty much the same way as Nevil. Of course, I don’t know what RH he preferred.
“If you chop the plant at the base, and slowly dry the whole plant, it will take at least a couple of days to fully die. In this period the plant uses the remaining sugars. If conditions were humid, I'd remove the fan leaves, but I preferred not to. If the plant is hung upside down, the leaves dry around the bud offering natural protection. When you smoke it, it's still in pristine condition. I just hate it when people manicure wet and smear the resin around and then force dry it. That's just disrespecting the plant. I like to manicure as I'm preparing my joint. It's the natural way.
N.
I hope this long-winded answer helps someone – the short answer is there is no perfect answer for everyone. Whatever RH you like is the perfect RH to store your medicine - for you!
Longball
