Harvest & Extraction

The post-harvest line, stage by stage

The gear on this page is for one stretch of the grow: from cutting plants down to packing the finished product. Run the stages in order — trim, dry, cure, store — and each step is easier than if you skip ahead. This parent page maps the line; every stage below has its own collection with the full range.

Trim. Japanese steel is where hand work starts — 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 — with ARS long-nose snips, Fiskars micro-tips and AC Infinity's stainless pruning shears sitting next to them. See the full set in Trimming Scissors & Pruners. Once a few plants become a pile, Trimming Machines is the next stop: 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. Between hand tools and a powered machine, hand-cranked Bowl Trimmers — SeaHawk's, and AC Infinity's 40.6cm and 48.2cm bowls — cover small dry batches. Trim trays with 100 and 200 micron screens catch the kief as you go.

Dry and cure. The fortnight after the trim lives on Drying & Curing — 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 that keep the cure on track.

Store and carry. Zip-Zag resealable barrier bags from 28g up to 1kg, and the containers that go with them, sit in Storage Supplies. 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. From solventless through to lab, Extraction covers the full span. Ice-water and dry-sift work uses bubble bags from 25 to 220 micron, 20L sift kits and T-handle pollen presses. Rosin Presses start at a 550kg manual mini, then 2.5t and 4t units, up to a 5t hydraulic. Across International sits at the top end with 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 — is here too.

Weigh and protect. On Balance makes up Digital Scales, from a 100g x 0.01g concentrate scale to a 5000g x 0.1g bench unit, and a Triminator moisture meter is there 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 handful of plants is scissors and a tray. When hand trimming a run spills past a weekend, a bowl trimmer or a benchtop machine earns its keep in labour alone.
2. Decide wet or dry trim first. Choose wet or dry before you buy the machine. Wet is quicker and easier on a trimmer; dry holds more aroma but wants rack space and a unit rated for dry material. Several machines here do both — read the listing.
3. Buy the consumables with the machine. Tumblers, reel and bed-bar blades, drive belts, hoppers, brush assemblies and blowers are wear parts. The CenturionPro spare-parts range is here so a machine bought on this page can be serviced instead of replaced.
4. Size the cure, not just the cut. The cut is not the bottleneck — rack space and jar or pouch volume are. 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. If you want oil without solvents, bubble bags and a rosin press are the small-footprint, modest-budget path. Closed-loop and distillation gear needs ventilation, a dedicated area and a much larger one.

If you are new to this end of the grow, begin at Drying & Curing. A harvest that was dried badly cannot be rescued by anything else on this page.