Harvest & Extraction

The post-harvest line, stage by stage

Everything on this page belongs to the same few weeks: the stretch between cutting plants down and putting the finished product away. Work through it in order — trim, dry, cure, store — and every stage after the first gets easier. This is the parent page for the lot; each stage below has its own collection with the full range.

Trim. Hand work starts with Japanese steel — Saboten's spring-loaded PT-5 hands-free scissors, the PT-15 and PT-16 automatic slims, AG-15 catch shears and the No.1200 and No.1255 pruning shears — alongside ARS long-nose snips, Fiskars micro-tips and AC Infinity's stainless pruning shears. The full set is in Trimming Scissors & Pruners. Past a few plants the maths stops working: Trimming Machines carries CenturionPro from the Mini and TableTop up to the Original and Gladiator, the Dry Batch Trimmer range at 3.15kg to 22.5kg an hour, Triminator's Hybrid wet/dry, the Twister T4 and Bloom Works' 457mm and 483mm benchtop units. Hand-cranked Bowl Trimmers — SeaHawk's, and AC Infinity's 40.6cm and 48.2cm bowls — sit between the two for small dry batches. Trim trays with 100 and 200 micron screens catch the kief while you work.

Dry and cure. Drying & Curing is the hub for the fortnight that follows — hanging drying racks from Sea-Hawk (1.8m towers in 75cm and 90cm diameters) and AC Infinity (18in 4-tier, 24in 6-tier), then Grove Bags TerpLoc pouches, Miron violet-glass jars and Boveda 62% packs to hold the cure steady.

Store and carry. Storage Supplies covers Zip-Zag resealable barrier bags from 28g up to 1kg and the containers that go with them. Smell Proof Bags is Avert's carbon-lined range — 3.5g foil pouches through to a 5.5L travel bag, a 27L backpack and XL duffles.

Extract. Extraction spans the whole distance from solventless to lab. Ice-water and dry-sift work runs on bubble bags from 25 to 220 micron, 20L sift kits and T-handle pollen presses. Rosin Presses go from a 550kg manual mini through 2.5t and 4t units to a 5t hydraulic. At the top end Across International supplies 25L and 53L vacuum ovens, 2L rotary evaporators, short-path distillation kits, -20°C and -30°C recirculating chillers and EasyVac 7CFM and 9CFM vacuum pumps. Butter, decarb and gummy gear — Wicked, Wild Butter and the POT by NOIDS infuser — lives here too.

Weigh and protect. Digital Scales is the On Balance line, from a 100g x 0.01g concentrate scale to a 5000g x 0.1g bench unit, and there's a Triminator moisture meter for calling the dry. Grow Room Glasses carries Method Seven and AC Infinity colour-corrective lenses for anyone still working under the lights.

How to size your harvest gear

1. Work from dry weight, not plant count. A few plants is a scissors-and-tray job. Once a run takes more than a weekend of hand trimming, a bowl trimmer or a benchtop machine pays for itself in labour alone.
2. Decide wet or dry trim first. Wet trimming is faster and easier on a machine; dry trimming holds more aroma but needs the rack space and a unit rated for dry material. Several machines here do both — check the listing before you buy.
3. Buy the consumables with the machine. Tumblers, reel and bed-bar blades, drive belts, hoppers, brush assemblies and blowers all wear. We carry the CenturionPro spare-parts range so a machine bought here can be kept running rather than replaced.
4. Size the cure, not just the cut. Rack space and jar or pouch volume are what actually cap a harvest. Work out the wet weight coming down and buy drying and curing capacity to match it.
5. Match extraction to what you want to make. Bubble bags and a rosin press need no solvent, little space and a modest budget. Closed-loop and distillation gear needs ventilation, a dedicated area and a much larger one.

New to this end of the grow? Start at Drying & Curing — nothing else on this page rescues a harvest that was dried badly.