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Harvest day can be an exciting moment, but exhausting at the same time.
Before you smoke, sell or photograph these buds, they need to be trimmed.
If you have a large yield from your garden, great for you!
However, that also means you need to trim more.
When there’s a lot of cutting to do, you might want to invest in help...like a bud trimmer.
Not sure where to start?
Let’s go over the best bud trimmer reviews.
Quick Top 5 Bud Trimmer Reviews:
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Why Trim Cannabis Buds?
Before going out and getting a bud trimmer, you should probably understand why you trim in the first place.
Pruning your cannabis buds is important for aesthetics.
So, if you're growing for a cannabis shop or need Louvre-quality Instagram photos, then trimming is absolutely necessary.
However, it also makes for a more potent product.
Whenever you buy cannabis, you don’t want a bag full of stems, twigs, and leaves.
You want fat flower nugs glistening with trichomes.
Getting Rid of Sugar Leaves
Sugar leaves are the long finger-like leaves that grow over your bud.
You will notice that there are a bunch of tiny trichomes on your sugar leaves.
While trichomes do carry THC, the sugar leaves are less potent than the buds they surround.
Not to mention, they are much harsher to smoke than bud.
While you're trimming the sugar leaves off of the bud, don’t toss it out.
You can use these THC-laden plant materials in many other ways such as making dry ice hash, cannabutter for cooking, or oil extractions for medicinal tinctures.
When to Trim Cannabis Plants?
Some might trim as soon as they harvest their yield.
Others prefer to wait until they dry the marijuana out first.
The first option is called wet trimming and the second is called dry trimming.
Both are sufficient ways to care for your cannabis.
It just comes down to a matter of preferences.
Why Dry Trimming vs Wet Trimming?
Unless you're in a time rush, dry trimming might be the best choice in terms of getting a bigger yield.
Dry trimming is much easier on the bud.
When your bud is still wet and sticky after harvest, it can become misshapen.
...if you are new to growing cannabis, wet trim is much easier.
So, if you place a wet plant on their side in a bud trimmer, it will flatten the plant.
Not to mention, you can end up losing more plant matter due to wet trimming.
However, if you are a complete newbie to growing cannabis, wet trim is much easier.
It’s just a matter of taking the marijuana directly from the branch and getting to work.
Whereas, with drying you need to worry about climate conditions and constantly check on the well-being of your trimmings.
Setting up to Dry Trim and Wet Trim Your Bud
Whether you decide to dry trim or wet trim your buds, the processes are a lot alike.
First and foremost, you want to cut the branches into sizes that are manageable for you.
Use a large shear to cut through thick branches.
Just make sure that the branches attached to your buds are neither too long or too short.
If you're wet trimming, place them into a container or hang them by their stems on a clothesline until you are ready to work.
Then, remove the fan leaves, which are the bright green leaves that have no sugar on them.
How to Dry Trim Your Bud
This is where the differences between dry trimming and wet trimming begin.
Once the fan leaves are out of the picture, you're ready to hang your buds to dry.
Drying is a fine line to cross in cultivating cannabis.
You want the best climate conditions for the bud during different stages of the drying process.
General rule of thumb, humidity levels should be around the following:
- Day #1: ~68 Degrees F with 50% humidity
- Day #3: ~62 Degrees F with 60% humidity
- Days #7-10: ~75 Degrees F with 45% humidity
By the time you are done, you should be able to break the stems easily.
Now you can closely manicure the sugar leaves off.
You can leave them on for added THC, but be aware that the smoke will not be as smooth as it would be if you were to remove them.
How to Wet Trim Your Bud
As we last left off with wet trimming, you have removed the fan leaves.
After the fan leaves are out of the picture, you can go ahead and take off the sugar leaves as well.
Now, your wet trim is now ready to be dried and cured.
How to Load Up a Bud Trimmer
Once you get a bud trimmer, you will wonder why you ever spent all that time trimming your plants by hand.
To use a bud trimmer, place your wet or dry trim onto a stainless steel grate sitting on top of a metal bowl.
Surrounding the bud is a see-through dome.
On the top of the dome is a handle attached to a lever that you crank.
The handle does a couple of things.
Attached to the handle are numerous silicone pieces that whip around your cannabis over the grate.
In many bud trimmer reviews, they compare these silicone pieces to the power of multiple scissors.
How to Use a Bud Trimmer
Underneath the grate is a blade that’s also attached to the lever.
As the bud is spinning, the plants are going in the opposite direction of the blade, which is cutting off the excess plant matter.
When you're done, beautiful nuggets will sit on top of the grate while all the stems, leaves, and twigs go into the bowl underneath.
The Best Bud Trimmer Reviews
You know how to dry trim and wet trim your bud and how to run a bud trimmer.
Now, let’s go over some bud trimmer reviews so you can start saving time on this taxing process.
iPower 19-Inch Leaf Bowl Trimmer
Want to enlist in Edward Scissorhands to help trim your bud?
Look no further than the iPower 19-Inch Leaf Bowl Trimmer.
This powerful bud trimmer boasts the strength of 30 sharp scissors designed to cut your trimming process down in no time.
Not wanting to damage your bud, the iPower Leaf Bowl comes with rubber tongues that gently glide your plants over the sharp blades.
Each time you turn the handle, the tongues spin the plants around 30 times.
This can cut down an hour’s worth of work into 30 seconds.
If manually cranking the bud trimmer is too tiresome, you can attach an electric drill to this bud trimmer.
Just be sure that you don’t put the drill on too fast so that it doesn’t destroy the plant material you're trying to trim.
If you feel that the leaves aren’t small enough, you can continue this process until you have the product that you desire.
What makes the iPower Leaf Bowl Trimmer such a great bud trimmer is that it is optimized to handle both wet trim and dry trim.
For a dry trim, use the wire blade.
However, if you have wet trim, switch it up with the straight blade.
The straight blade is ideal for wet trim because when cannabis is wet, it is softer.
Therefore, more of the plant matter might come off onto the blade, making it harder to clean the bud trimmer.
Don’t overstuff this trimmer.
It can comfortably cut around 40 grams at a time.
Adding more can hurt the potency of your product and the overall aesthetic of your bud.
If you find yourself with bigger branches, cut those by hand.
Otherwise you will run the risk of losing some of your potent trimmings with all the excess down below.
Hydrofarm HGPP400C Precision Curved Blade Pruner
While this bud trimmer doesn’t do all the work for you like the iPower Leaf Bowl Trimmer (and all the others on this list), it will make the workload much easier to handle.
These Hydrofarm Precision Blade Pruners are versatile for many reasons.
For one, they are suitable for righties and lefties.
However, they also come with different options for blades.
There are three different choices when it comes to purchasing the Hydrofarm Precision Blade Pruner.
They are:
- Straight Stainless Steel Blade
- Curved Stainless Steel Blade
- Curved Titanium Blade
Curved blades are ideal for the pruning phase because the rounded tips make it easier to access harder-to-reach areas of your cannabis plant.
However, no matter which type of blade you decide to go with, you're guaranteed blades that will never rust and should remain sharp for a long time.
One of the best features of the Hydrofarm Precision Blade Pruner is the comfort in its design.
First and foremost, this heavy-duty bud trimmer is very lightweight.
The pruner has a quick return spring that allows you to keep up with the groove you set for yourself during the trimming process.
Once you find the ideal setting, the Hydrofarm Precision Blade Pruner has a comfort lock that further accentuates its ergonomic design.
For safekeeping, this bud trimmer also comes with a handy holster.
It even has a belt loop for easy storage as you go about all of your plant care needs.
That way you can pull the trimmer out and stow it away as necessary.
A1Kingdom 16-Inch Leaf Bowl Bud Trimmer
The A1Kingdom Leaf Bowl Bud Trimmer is much like the iPower Leaf Bowl Trimmer.
Seeing as it’s a bit smaller, it can handle less bud at a time.
However, there are some features that make the A1Kingdom unique.
For one, this bud trimmer has legs.
These are really useful in keeping the bud trimmer in place as you turn the handle on top.
The silicone handle on the crank is very soft, which makes the manual churning a lot easier for trimming.
With just one rotation of the handle, your cannabis will receive the equivalent of 24 cuts from a pair of scissors!
This bud trimmer is also optimized for both wet herb and dry herb as it has interchangeable straight and wire blades.
In addition, this product comes with a stainless steel 4-edge blade.
Having the serrated edges makes for finer cuts.
Whereas if you opt to use the flat blade, it may turn the leaves into crumbly bits.
Growtent Garden Bowl 16-Inch Trimmer
The Growtent Garden Bowl 16-Inch Trimmer is like a marriage between some of the others in these bud trimmer reviews.
This bud trimmer is akin to having 30 scissors inside of the system like the iPower.
In terms of the exterior, Growtent took the same approach as the A1Kingdom by designing little feet to the bottom of the trimmer to give it a no-slip grip on any surface.
Aesthetics-wise, the Growtent has a bit more of a sleeker look than some of the other trimmers.
Its basin has more of a pear-shaped curve to it that gives this particular bud trimmer a bit more of an appeal.
MELONFARM 16-Inch Automatic Hydroponic Bud Trimmer
If you're doing the dry trimming method for bud trimming, then the MELONFARM 16-Inch Automatic Hydroponic Bud Trimmer might be the best choice for you.
This system comes with two wire blades and a serrated blade as well.
However, don’t be deterred if you're using wet trim.
They also have a razor blade in the set that would be a more efficient choice for that cultivation method.
While there seems to a plethora of these blades going around, take care of them.
MELONFARM does not sell replacements for these bud trimmers.
So, if you damage your blade or it loses its sharpness for any reason, you would have to buy yourself a whole new bud trimmer.
Unlike some of the other bud trimmers where you can use an electric drill to speed up the process (and take off some of the labor pains), MELONFARM does not suggest this shortcut.
However, they do plan on creating a bud trimmer in the future that will allow you to enjoy that feature.
Conclusion
With how many options there are, you can catch yourself browsing through bud trimmer reviews for days on end!
We hope that you were able to narrow your search down with these recommendations.
Tell us what you ended up going with! Automatic or shears?
Did you go wet or dry trim this harvest?
Show us in the comments!
Last update on 2021-03-25 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API