I've been wondering about the effect of ethylene gas on speeding up curing for a while and judging by the number of posts about the subject on weed forums I am not the first. It is used to speed up the ripening of fruit and also in floristry... I could find a lot of people giving advice about it's efficacy but could not find a single thread where someone had tried it and posted their results. My computer has been out of action for a few weeks but during that time I gave it a go. From the outset I want to make clear that my goal was to speed up the curing process rather than to mature some unripe bud. The bud I used was dreamberry and I separated off about an eighth from my batch and used banana peel instead of weed leaves to keep the humidity up. Admittedly, I think the banana peel is wetter than weed leaves so there may also be something in just having more moisture in your curing bud (if you can't admit when you have confounding factors then everyone else will pick you apart).
I put about 10 sq cm of banana peel into a small glass jar with the lid open, I then placed that jar in another jar (old jam jar, smaller than my usual curing jars to keep the ratio of air to bud in there similar). This way the banana peel was not in direct contact with the bud, I didn't want the inside of the old banana peel to touch the weed and start it actually rotting.
A week later I did a smoke test and while it's hard to judge small changes I do feel the bud had become a little more mature in terms of it's effect (by comparison to the weed cured without the banana) but the real difference is in the smoothness. It did seem to cut through the chlorophyll faster than regular curing. Like I said it would be damper in there because of the moisture level in a banana peel so I guess I could either use less peel in the test jar or more fresh leaves in the curing jar to overcome that. It wasn't the maturation I was hoping for in terms of the high though. I like a couchlock stone and harvested this plant with about 20% amber trichs, this was still primarily cerebral but I do believe there is a slight increase in the muscle relaxation. The downside is that the banana changes the smell of the weed during curing, but it's only temporary. It smelled more cakey like "wedding cake" but after swapping the containers out that changed to a super subtle banana smell after a few days.
Anyway, I know it's not much but I hope that if someone else is wndering about ethylene gas then this will help them choose whether they want to try. Bear in mind this was only over a week but the smoke was still different afterwards. I would probably consider doing this if I was given some overdried, poorly cured weed or if I was in a rush to get my cure done quickly so I didn't have to go purchase weed.
I put about 10 sq cm of banana peel into a small glass jar with the lid open, I then placed that jar in another jar (old jam jar, smaller than my usual curing jars to keep the ratio of air to bud in there similar). This way the banana peel was not in direct contact with the bud, I didn't want the inside of the old banana peel to touch the weed and start it actually rotting.
A week later I did a smoke test and while it's hard to judge small changes I do feel the bud had become a little more mature in terms of it's effect (by comparison to the weed cured without the banana) but the real difference is in the smoothness. It did seem to cut through the chlorophyll faster than regular curing. Like I said it would be damper in there because of the moisture level in a banana peel so I guess I could either use less peel in the test jar or more fresh leaves in the curing jar to overcome that. It wasn't the maturation I was hoping for in terms of the high though. I like a couchlock stone and harvested this plant with about 20% amber trichs, this was still primarily cerebral but I do believe there is a slight increase in the muscle relaxation. The downside is that the banana changes the smell of the weed during curing, but it's only temporary. It smelled more cakey like "wedding cake" but after swapping the containers out that changed to a super subtle banana smell after a few days.
Anyway, I know it's not much but I hope that if someone else is wndering about ethylene gas then this will help them choose whether they want to try. Bear in mind this was only over a week but the smoke was still different afterwards. I would probably consider doing this if I was given some overdried, poorly cured weed or if I was in a rush to get my cure done quickly so I didn't have to go purchase weed.
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