Storing Cannabis Plant and Medicine
Cannabis everything can be really expensive and you’ll want to protect and preserve it.
And it’s a plant that has a shelf life and is highly sensitive to its environment which if wrong could totally make your medicine give you unwanted side effects.
It can totally change its medicine depending on its storage, where, how, how long, temps, lights, the works. It’s sensitive!
The basics to remember:
Plant material like flower, buds, sugar leaves and trim: Once the plant material is correctly dried and cured, it needs to be stored in the dark, in room temp cool, in an air tight container BUT with the proper humidity to keep the trichomes and terpenes as fresh as possible.
It can be stored in a closed mason jar but definitely with a Boveda humidity packet.
It needs to be stored fairly cool. This would be room temps of 60-72 degrees or so.
It must be stored in the dark. The clear glass jar can be purchased or painted with a black paint, or stored in a dark closet that is NOT by hot water plumbing or heating anything or closed into a dark box, suitcase, etc.
It can be stored in cannabis specialty metal containers with a Boveda.
If properly stored, plant materials can stay inhalable fresh for up to 6 months or more, and longer if the plant will be used in the Recipe infusions.
The first thing to go quickly is the terpenes. These matter when inhaling the plant and add to the medicinal effect as well as possible side effects. They do evaporate and deteriorate sometimes with days or weeks if not properly stored.
Plant materials (and prepared cannabis medicines) stored near heat sources, even on a sunny window sill for 20 minutes, can begin to change the cannabinoids to other cannabinoids, as well as begin to partially decarboxylate. This is especially true for THCA turning into euphoric THC and partially changed to CBN (highly sedative side effects) or inactivated.
Light, even cool light, also degrade the terpenes and cannabinoids.
Plant materials, if stored correctly, can keep your cannabis medicine-ready for months.
You can easily find mason jars, Boveda packets (get the 62 RH in 8 gram sizes) and cv metal vault containers online.
For storing any prepared cannabis medicines like the Recipe, THC-rich, CBD-rich, or formulations that include the cannabinoid acids like THCA and CBDA, the instructions are really the same.
Dark. Not even a bedside lamp with your medicines sitting under it. They could change their nature in minutes! One client had bought a specialty cannabis tincture of THCA acids (California) and left it on the kitchen counter near the window. The next day he came into work slightly intoxicated and other employees were asking him what happened! And he remembered he had left his medicine out in the light. The THCA (which has NO psychoactive properties) was so sensitive to light it turned into THC (very psychoactive) in use, just in a few minutes.
Medicines definitely need to be stored away from heat sources like hot water plumbing or heat vents or warm or light window or door areas. The medicines could change their components just within minutes.
And keep the daily medicine in the dark.
They need to be room temp though. Unless you are storing medicines for future use, which most can be stored long term depending on the base ingredients, but coconut oil base medicines can be stored for months in a freezer or often just a fridge.
But you need them room temp to effectively be able to get your dosing utensil to work.
In fact, one of the BEST ways to long-term store plant material, like excess left over from a home harvest, is to make it into your medicine– decarb and infuse it into the Recipe infusion and then keep the medicine in the freezer until needed.
If you are storing cannabis seeds for more than a few months after purchase, those keep great, for a few years, if a few seeds each are sealed into opaque mylar bags with a natural clay desiccant and oxygen absorber (all found under long term food storage supplies companies) and then kept in the bottom of the fridge (don’t freeze seeds).
