Anyone close to or directly in the cannabis industry knows the excitement of croptober. For outdoor growers, it’s one of the year’s most bountiful and time-consuming months. Without maximum efficiency, you could miss out on maximizing the period.
So, from improving your yields for extraction purposes to increasing quality or fine-tuning output for desired ratios and streamlining post-harvest practices, it’s important to prepare for Croptober with a clear and concise strategy.
That’s why we’ve put together the ultimate guide to maximizing croptober to help. Keep reading to learn more about croptober weed, including how Vape-Jet can support preserving and protecting the precious fruits of the grower’s labor!
Use Effective Growing Season Strategies
In cannabis, like so many things in life, you reap what you sow. As a result, your croptober weed yields and success heavily depend on the in-season cultivation practices you implement. To ensure the success of your operation, consider the following best practices that leading cultivators rely on for achieving maximum yields, particularly in extraction:
- Choose high-yield, resin-rich strains: It goes without saying that selecting resin-rich strains known for producing abundant trichomes is ideal for crops heading to extraction.
- Living soils or medium choice: Utilizing living soil with beneficial microbes, fungi, and organic material is a technique often used to enhance plant health, which directly impacts resin production. No matter the medium, implementing compost teas and mycorrhizal fungi can also improve nutrient uptake, leading to healthier plants and more robust trichome production.
- Optimize plant spacing: For grows focusing on extraction material, cultivators often space the plants more densely than when prioritizing big buds for flower production. This helps maximize yield per square foot.
- Implement strategic defoliation: Schwayzing or removing excess fan leaves to improve light penetration and air circulation, especially in the weeks leading up to harvest, can help boost resin production.
- Fine-tune nutrient regimen: To encourage resin production during the flowering stage, focus on phosphorus and potassium (found together in cannabis bloom booster products).
- Manage temperature and humidity: During the final weeks of flowering, maintain slightly cooler temperatures and lower humidity levels to stress plants into producing more resin.
Conduct Pre-Harvest Preparations
Again, preparation is key to croptober cannabis harvesting success. So, before the plants come down, here are the best practices leading operations follow to maximize efficiency.
- Weather preparation: Set up tarps or temporary structures to protect from rain if needed, and consider what to do for unexpected cold snaps or frost (have heaters on standby, etc.)
- Equipment check: Ensure all harvesting tools (pruning shears, buckets, etc.) are clean and sharp. It also helps to prepare drying or freezing areas, making sure they’re clean and climate-controlled.
- Labor planning: Schedule additional help if needed for harvest, and be sure to train helpers on proper harvesting techniques.
- Plant monitoring: Begin daily checks of trichome color and development. Prepare jeweler’s loupes or digital microscopes for close inspection.
- Compliance and testing: Schedule any required compliance testing. Prepare necessary paperwork for regulatory requirements.
- Post-harvest planning: Arrange for trim crews if needed, and plan for proper storage of harvested material.
- Extraction planning: Ensure your facility is equipped and up to speed to process the amount of incoming material and maximize the efficiency of your processes prior to the material landing. This helps fill, package, and sell products (and reach a profit!) faster.
Harvest Cannabis Plants Effectively
Now, here is where the magic happens. The plants have grown from clone to maturity and are ready to harvest. The harvest techniques and transportation methods are crucial for the most effective and efficient extraction. Next, let’s learn more about both.
Techniques
Timing and technique are crucial when harvesting cannabis plants for extraction purposes. While we’ve already covered how to time your harvest, here are some techniques to keep in mind for harvesting cannabis plants effectively.
Many facilities immediately freeze the material for live resin extraction and simply take down entire plants or large branches to save time. However, depending on your extractor’s preference or extraction type, wet trimming can reduce plant material, helping to save space and efficiency.
Wet trimming entails removing large fan leaves but keeping sugar leaves because they also have a light coating of valuable trichomes. Some cultivators harvest early in the morning when the concentration of terpenes is believed to be at its peak. Other growers harvest and hang entire plants to dry before processing, which can be more time-efficient for large operations.
Transporting and Handling Cannabis
Regardless of the harvesting technique, be sure to handle plants gently to minimize trichome loss and use clean, sharp tools to prevent contamination. From start to finish, it’s crucial to maintain a clean environment and wear gloves to preserve the integrity of the resin for extraction.
Transporting material from one facility to another requires careful planning and execution to maintain product quality and comply with regulations. If transporting between locations, use climate-controlled vehicles to maintain optimal temperature and humidity levels, typically around 60-70°F and 45-55% relative humidity.
Ensure all transportation complies with local and state regulations, including proper documentation and chain of custody records. This includes using tamper-evident seals and even considering GPS tracking for added security. When transporting dried product, it is recommended to use airtight, light-proof containers to preserve cannabinoids and terpenes. If you are keeping it frozen, using insulated containers with dry ice will help maintain freezing temperatures.
Lastly, always prioritize discretion during transport to minimize security risks, and train staff on proper handling and transportation protocols to ensure consistency and compliance throughout the harvest process.
Post-Harvest Processing
Next, we’ll highlight the post-harvest stages beyond the plant, from bud to oil.
Drying
If the flower material for live products isn’t freshly frozen, it’ll go through a drying stage to remove excess moisture. To maintain and protect the integrity of the plant’s natural expression of cannabinoids and terpenes, it’s crucial to monitor this phase carefully and closely.
Curing
Curing is a process that’s not required for extraction purposes (it helps shelf-stability for buds and smokable flowers) but can be beneficial in some ways. For instance, cured material can be easier to work with for traditional solvent-based extracts like BHO and CO2-extracted oils, producing higher yields with enhanced flavor profiles in some cases.
Trim and Use Excess Trim for Vapes
Utilizing excess cannabis trim for vape products is an effective way to maximize the value of harvest byproducts. Trim, consisting of sugar leaves and small buds, contains significant amounts of cannabinoids and terpenes, making it suitable for extraction.
To create vape products, processors typically use methods like CO2 or hydrocarbon extraction to isolate the desired compounds from the trim. After winterizing the resulting crude oil to eliminate waxes and lipids, distillation is performed to refine and concentrate the cannabinoids.
Some brands enhance distillate with strain-specific terpenes to create full-spectrum vape oils for more potent, flavor-neutral options. You could also process fresh frozen trim for live resin extraction, offering broader terpene profiles for a more robust flavor experience.
When using trim for vapes, it’s crucial to ensure proper testing for contaminants like pesticides and heavy metals, as these can become concentrated during the extraction process. While trim-derived vape products may not command the premium of flower-extracted options, they offer a cost-effective way to create high-quality vape oils. This allows cultivators and extract brands to monetize what might otherwise be considered waste material, maximizing total ROI.
Storage
Once dried and cured, storing the material in airtight, light-proof containers made of glass or food-grade stainless steel is best to minimize terpene and cannabinoid degradation from light and oxygen exposure.
Temperature and humidity control are crucial to preserving a flower or extract’s natural expression, as its cannabinoids and terpenes determine its quality and integrity. Proper storage techniques not only maintain the cannabinoid and terpene profiles but also contribute to the overall quality and yield of the extracted product.
Start Extraction and Filling Vapes
The faster you can begin extraction and fill vapes, the quicker your product will hit the shelves to turn a profit. Hence, the importance of making each stage of the process that much more efficient. To finish our guide, let’s talk about efficiency when preserving the integrity of the material to maximize profits and the equipment to do so.
Extract To Preserve The Integrity Of Outdoor Bud And Maximize Profits
Gaining a competitive edge is not just about efficiency but also quality. We built Vape-Jet with cannabis in mind, configuring it to protect and preserve the integrity of all the extracts it processes.
It goes without saying that extracting from mature, fully developed buds will produce a higher-quality extract. Operations should preserve this higher-quality extract to maximize product price, customer satisfaction, and retention or loyalty. However, the same is true for protecting the integrity of any trim extract you run.
With higher-quality equipment filling vape carts or all-in-one devices, you can maximize profits for all SKUs, regardless of their original quality or price point. When extracting buds or trim material, Vape-Jet offers the following equipment features to preserve the integrity of outdoor or croptober weed:
- Three individual heat zones
- Nitrogen-pressurized fluid path
Both help keep the natural profiles of distillate, rosin, CO2, and other extracts by minimizing degradation, evaporation, and oxidation.
Filling Vapes With Excess Trim & Buds With Vape-Jet
Across the US (and Canada, too!), leading extract brands for all-in-one vapes or 510 carts choose Vape-Jet for ultimate operational efficiency. Whether you’re a small lab looking to scale or a high-volume enterprise, Vape-Jet offers a machine that’ll fit your unique needs and boost your business’s profitability.
For instance, the Vape-Jet, a fully automatic filling machine, can fill between 5,000 and 10,000 vape cartridges and all-in-one devices per shift with the lowest labor inputs and lowest operating temperatures of any machine on the market.
Vape-Jet’s configuration profiles and flexible automation allow your operation to change hardware types and oil formulations quickly, resulting in faster fill times that help expand your brand’s overall SKUs (like swapping between bud extract and trim extract).
How To Use Vape-Jet’s Automatic Vape Filling Machines
Now that you’ve learned how to maximize Croptober from cultivation to filling vapes, equip your facility with the leading automatic vape-filling machine. Take the time today to learn more about the industry-leading Vape-Jet collection designed to maximize filling and operational efficiency.
Whether you’re just building your facility or seeking to improve efficiency, Vape-Jet is the choice for leading extractors. So, choose the automatic vape filling machine built to reduce costs and fill variability while preserving product quality for your operation, too.
Get ahead of the competition by maximizing croptober weed and year-round crops. Contact the Vape-Jet team to get started now.
