Bud washing, anyone do it? I'm about to.

[fwril]

Has anyone done the pre dry bud wash such as on the GWE site?
I will be harvesting this week and need to was my buds to get the diatmaceous earth off them. Had to hit them with some due to spider mites that snuck up on me.

Doing some reading I can't seem to find anyone who has had a negative exp with this. But alot of ppl are saying they would never do it.

Will post my result here for all to see good or bad.

[9fingerleafs]

Are you washing them in ro water? or water/peroxide solution and then ro water to remove peroxide

[fwril]

I'm going to be using tap water. 3 buckets first is a
one cup lemonn juice and 4 table spoons of baking soda. 2nd warm water 3rd room temp water. I would use ro water but not available and my tap water is rather weak on the chems. Live a long way from the treatment plant.

[9fingerleafs]

ive seen jorge cervantes use only water and peroxide with great succes, you can see the mold piling up in the surface, check this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7jE7qzfgQs

[PaganRich]

fwril Greetings mate. Never heard of this before. Why do you wash bud sites for? Is it to remove sprayed on chemicals?

[GreenhouseEffect]

I have applied compost tea to my buds before, and it kind of ruined them. The pistils turned brown, and one of the plants started to smell like dirt instead of lemon, like they did before I poured compost tea on them.
Those plants ended up getting tossed instead of smoked, any way though, since that whole grow ended up being a disaster. After that time, I only do the foliar compost tea while they are in vedge.

[GreenhouseEffect]

I do think it is really good for them during vedge though, and possibly some protective properties as well.
I like to get them really good under the leaves with DE before flowering, then hit them with compost tea twice, to wash it off just the tops of the leaves before they make any buds. Seems like a good idea at least, so started doin it that way, got to be better then what I did to em before, but guess I have to learn some how, and it's rarely the easy way.

[PaganRich]

GreenhouseEffect Thank you for that mate, this was new to me so appreciated the time to respond. Take care

[Potted]

I do a wash on my outside harvest all the time,it removes unwanted pollen,dirt.bird shit,bugs from buds and doesent harm anything.

[Motoman15]

DE is great for reducing pest levels , never heard of putting it on plants to kill them, only mixed in top level of soil. Next time try spinosad or azamax to kill the bastards.Good luck with the wash.

[fwril]

No pictures sorry. But I did harvest one of 4 plants last night.
To recap the method, I ended up getting 3 totes to wash in. The kind you use to store stuff under ur bed. These worked really well.
First tote was 1 cup lemon juice and 2 table spoons of baking soda. To 5 gallons of cool tap water.
2nd warm water
3rd room temp / cool water

Started by first completely trimming the buds as if I was going to just hang to dry. Then would dunk and gently swril the buds in the first tote. Nothing vigrous just a nice slow washing motion. Then I let them soak for a few minutes. Let them drain then run through remaining two washes. After washing I simply spun the buds in the air for a bit to sling all the excesses water off placed them on a rack in front of a fan to blow dry all remaining water from the outside off. Once dry on the outside hang to dry as normal.

Observations:
1. I took a very close look at the buds pre wash and post wash. The tricomes did not change one bit that I can see. In color or quantity.
2. The bud color changed a great deal. My buds (which had large amounts of diatmaceous earth on them) went from a darker almost olive green. To vibrant green with mixes of pruple in them. When I say vibrant I mean holy cow that's green kinda green.
3.Smell, which I'm no blood hound. I really have little experience to judge this but. Pre was they were dank, strain is blue cheese so they are strong. I personally did not like the smell. Post wash was more subtle, kinda citrus smell(possibly just lemon juice I'm picking up here).
4. Did it clean them? Yeah it did I can't find a spec of anything on them it's rather amazeing actually. The water from the first wash though....... Just don't look at it.

All in all seems to be a success. Will keep posting as buds dry my major concern is mold now but with the fan dry they seem no different than if you were to cut and hanging as normal. Just way cleaner now.