You indeed have to let the plant finish. And it needs stalk to finish. Root would be even better but logistics don't always allow. Leave everything as intact as possible, I can't understand why novice growers are in a rush to take pictures of their buds, that they mutilate and ruin them before they finish.
I have rooted plants with pure highlighter neon yellow buds sitting in the dark as we speak. Been days, weeks, don't even keep track. I haven't seen anyone else grow the neon in years. And with one undisclosed little trick they will be twice as stinky as any bud at any cup anyone's ever attended in Cannabis history. (But can't give everything away, nothings free in this world!)
The way most people harvest their bud, Id hate to see them on a racetrack. Cut across the infield on lap 1, head for the pits and call themselves a winner with fingers in their ears. Maybe their boyfriend will buy them a plastic trophy.
Growforum culture doesn't understand any ancient Cannabis harvesting practices. Because nutes have weight and dark green unfinished nutey bud sells, so who cares about firing up the ol' noggin or getting a grasp on quality. Remember all these internet growers are expert smollier level cannoisseurs with highly evolved pallettes and can definitely tell 2 buds apart in a showdown, every single one of them!
To make gold weed what you do is after cutting you keep them in a humid space, like about 80-90% RH, and increase temperature to about 105 F. The curing processes double in rate when temperature is raised by 10 degrees, but after a certain point it kills the enzymes so you don't go above 100-110 F, unless you want to stop the curing and "set" the color at that point. In tobacco curing this part of the curing process is called "coloring". Just doing a quick search I found a patent that describes a supposedly improved procedure, the advantage appearing to be speed, because at normal pressure it takes about 48 hours. It probably wouldn't be difficult to find something that could take 2-5 atmospheres of pressure. I would buy something made for it though, not try to cobble something together that might blow the hell up. It would certainly be convenient to cure your weed in 40 minutes, then all you need to do is dry it down to 57-58% rh and it's done.
Obviously, what most growers do is not actually curing, it's just slow drying. If it was cured it wouldn't be green. If chlorophyll was desirable to smoke then there would be nothing but green cigars. It does also remove the fresh smell though, but who the hell cares. Which is better, smelling like primo Colombian or reeking like a skunk and stinking your home up for hours after smoking it? Those terps, which make uncured weed reek, are not actually good to smoke. They may have health benefits when eaten, but pretty sure not by smoking. Try smoking some turpentine sometime, the organic stuff from pine trees. I doubt you'll find it rewarding. Well it's pure pinene, the major terp in most weed strains, can buy a quart for like $10, it's really not that precious, just people who can't cure weed will tell you the stench is a good thing, and you'll probably buy it if you're an American.
People have been trained by dispensaries to think uncured weed is good and cured weed is bad, the complete opposite of reality. When you REALLY cure weed, it has a light sweet smell, not a goddamn reek that everyone can smell from 100 yards when you're carrying it. Nobody in Colombia would smoke American weed. Why the hell would they when they can get actual cured weed? If green weed was a good thing, they would just hang it up to dry like common American newbs. So now you know why your weed is green, even after you supposedly cured it, it's because you didn't, you just dried it. You set the coloring to green because you let it dry out too fast. At room temperature it takes at least 2 weeks of elevated humidity, at least 75%, to remove the green.
You know the pinned articles on here? Well if they produce green weed they're not curing at all. The "burping" thing does nothing but slowly dry it, same as if you stuck a Boveda pack in there and didn't bother with the burping crap. None of it is curing, because it was dried to fast lower than 75% rh, "setting" the color forevermore to exactly what it was when it got that dry. US and European growers know literally nothing about curing, sure are good at setting weed to green color though and keeping it stinky, very helpful to law enforcement. They also think quality weed can be grown with 8-10 weeks of flowering, which is clearly a joke to any real grower. If quality weed could be grown in that short a time then Yugoslavia would be a major weed producing nation. It takes a good month longer than that, which is why all outdoor US and European weed sucks. Indoor growers in those places are actually so dumb that they purposely CHOOSE to replicate the growing season of Yugoslavia. What's the point of that? Might as well have just grown it outdoors, either way it would be similarly crappy. Let me see, should I use the growing season of Panama or Yugoslavia? Tough call, huh?
1.
THE PROCESS OF CURING TOBACCO, WHICH COMPRISES COLORING THE TOBACCO BY EXPOSURE TO A GAS ESSENTIALLY CONSISTING OF OVER 50 PERCENT BY VOLUME OF OXYGEN, THE BALANCE HARMLESS IMPURITY, AT A RELATIVE HUMIDITY OF BETWEEN 85 AND 98 PERCENT, AT A TEMPERATURE BETWEEN 85* AND 100* F., UNDER A PRESSURE OF FROM 2 TO 5 ATMOSPHERES ABSOLUTE FOR A TIME OF 2 TO 40 MINUTES, SETTING THE COLOR BY TREATMENT IN AIR FOR FROM 5 TO 15 MINUTES AT A RELATIVE HUMIDITY BELOW 30 PERCENT AND A TEMPERATURE OF 170* TO 210* F. WHILE CIRCULATING THE AIR, AND KILLING OUT THE TOBACCO BY INCREASING THE TEMPERATURE AT LEAST 10* F. ABOVE THE TEMPERATURE OF SETTING TO A TEMPERATURE NOT IN EXCESS OF 220* F. AND CONTINUING THE TREATMENT WITH THE DRY AIR FOR A TIME OF IN EXCESS OF 5 MINUTES. https://patents.google.com/patent/US2708441
