Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower's Bible

scraped from tools, too. Resin can be collected by separating it from foliage and letting it fall through a sieve. Or it can be separated from foliage using cold water and sieves.

    Capture resin glands with small heads with a smaller mesh sieve. Courtesy of the Greenhouse.

Resin glands generally break off near the bottom of the stalk and just under the round head.
Before Making Hash
    Make sure your plants are as clean as possible. Any oil-based residues on leaves will show up in the hash. For example, if extracting resin with water, you can see impurity residues as a sheen of oil in the water. During the month before harvest, do not use any harmful chemicals that leave residues. I prefer to use only water-based organic products to avoid potential health risks to the consumer.
    Flush plants with water for seven to ten days prior to harvest, to remove built-up fertilizers in the soiland foliage. This will help ensure clean, sweet-tasting hash.
     
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    Pollen - In Europe and other parts of the world, sieved resin powder is called pollen. The term is used because the two look similar, but resin powder is not pollen. When you hear somebody talking about “pollen,” you know they are referring to resin powder.
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    Freeze First - Once dry, freeze leaf trim immediately to prepare for making hash. Place leaves in freezer for an hour or longer. Remove them from the freezer, and use a dry or wet sieve to separate gland heads from foliage. Collect more resin by making foliage and resin glands brittle. Cold, brittle resin gland heads snap off and separate easily.
     
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    Yield per gram of leaf and small buds
    Quantity — 100 gm leaf
    Dry Sieve — 4-6 gm
    Water Extraction — 6-10 gm
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    The yield from 7 ounces (200 gm) of leaves and small buds is around 0.2-0.7 ounces (6-20 gm) with the average around 0.36 ounce (10 gm). The quantity of hash produced depends in large part upon the quality of your original material.
    Clean stems, dead material, large leaves with no visible resin, and other debris leaf and bud before making hash with it.
    Male plants contain resin with THC but much less overall than female plants.
    Outdoor plants are subject to wind, rain, dust, etc., which may prevent resin growth or cause much of the resin to be knocked off the plant. Because they live in a protected environment, indoor plants are able to exude as much resin as possible. Such plants with heavy resin make the best hash. Great hash comes from the close trim around the buds.

Your tools and hands are a great source of “finger hash.” Scrape the resin from tools and manicuring gloves.
     
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    Keep the entire operation clean. This is the key to keeping everything separated properly and having minimal contamination.
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This piece of “finger hash” was scraped from fingers and trimming tools in a single day of trimming!

This beautiful brick of Moroccan hash was pressed a month before the photo was taken. The resin crystals glisten in the sunlight Now European and North American aficionados are learning to make better hash!
    Sativa -dominant strains have smaller trichome heads than indica -dominant strains. Smaller mesh sieves do a good job of separating smaller resin heads.
Hand Rub Hash
    Hand rubbing hash is simple and easy, but horridly inefficient and wasteful. All you need to hand rub are a good pair of hands, adequate cannabis buds, and desire. Much of the resin falls to the ground or becomes “lost” deep within buds or sticks to other foliage. Overall hand rubbed hash is lower quality and contains more debris than sieved or water-extracted hash.
    Hand rubbing is most common in the Himalayan Foothill regions of Nepal, India, and Kashmir where “charas” (the Indian word for [hand rubbed] hash) are fairly common. Most small-scale and commercial growers collect the little bit of hash from their hands and tools during manicuring. This is the closest thing to hand rubbed hash most growers experience.
    Plants that are best suited to hand rubbing have sticky resin that adheres to hands much better than it sticks to other foliage. At the same time, the resin must be relatively easy to roll into little balls to remove from hands.
    Collect hand rub from healthy, strong, mature plants with green leaves. However, some large leaves may already have started to turn yellow. Remove brown, crisp, and dead foliage before rubbing. Remember, cannabis plants are generally pretty tough and can take vigorous but not abusive