The final stage of the cannabis cultivation process, after the harvest, drying, and curing, is the meticulous task of trimming cannabis. Trimmers have to closely examine each delicate marijuana bud and use small scissors to remove excess leaf matter, stems, and any imperfections in order to reveal the flawless, trichome-covered flower. For commercial grow operations and amateur home growers alike, proper trimming is essential for ensuring cannabis reaches its highest possible quality before packaging. The trimmed buds’ manicured aesthetic also helps cannabis fetch the best price at market. Although tedious, trimming cannabis buds is an art form that requires care, precision, and great attention to detail. The best trimmers transform ragged, fresh-cut plants into gorgeous retail-ready nuggets worthy of a magazine cover. In this article, we’ll examine the tools, techniques, and insider tips needed to become a pro at how to trim cannabis. We spoke to Chet Helms and Judy Davis, along with Oriah Love. All three are experienced trimmers in the Pacific Northwest.
What tools and techniques do you recommend for efficiently trimming cannabis while preserving trichomes when trimming cannabis buds?
Sharp tools are a must when you’re talking about spending an 8-hour shift trimming cannabis. Back up scissors or a scissor sharpener can be your best friend. Everyone holds their own way when they trim. The key is to be mindful of the trichomes and use as gentle a touch as possible when trimming cannabis buds. Kief collection is something pretty much everyone does. Most people use a lap-resting trim container that collects the trimmed material and has a mesh screen that separates the trim from the kife when trimming cannabis.
How can trimmers ensure consistency and quality in their work when trimming cannabis?
Most pro trimmers who’ve been in the trim game for any number of years have developed their own system to ensure consistency in trimming cannabis buds. Whether that means they start from the base of the flower and work up the bud in a straight line, rotate the flower, and work up in another straight line until the flower is fully trimmed, or they start with crow’s feet then move on to bigger leaves and finish by cleaning up the finer leaves last, the goal is to make sure your process is identical with every flower you trim. Many farm owners will train their head trimmer to trim the way they like it when it comes to trimming cannabis. Then it’s the head trimmer’s job to show the rest of the crew exactly how the trimming cannabis buds is preferred.
Experience and training matter. How do you know if someone actually knows how to trim cannabis?
Experience definitely does matter in how to trim cannabis. Not so much in regard to the technique (that can be taught), but more of a mental and physical training. Posture is crucial, and oftentimes the more experienced trimmers have trained their bodies to hold a proper posture for the hours they are hunched over a table working on trimming cannabis buds. Trimming can be really hard on your back, your eyes, and your hands. The more experience one has with trimming cannabis, the more likely they are to last a full shift while maintaining consistency in the trim. Muscle memory plays a role too. A beginner trimmer might have sore hands and an achy back until they develop the experience required to counter those things with good posture and muscle development in their hands when trimming cannabis buds.
What are some rookie mistakes new cannabis trimmers often make when learning how to trim cannabis?
The biggest rookie mistake is trimming the cannabis flower a different way than the grower wants. They will typically show you exactly how they want their flower trimmed. Whether it’s a loose trim or a tight trim can be important to not just a grower, but dispensaries hoping to sell the flower as well. Some strains have trichomes covering the smaller leaves coming out of the flower and some people might want to leave that material on the flower when trimming cannabis buds. Other strains might be stunning once you peel back the layers of plant material during the trim process, and that might require a tighter trim. Always make sure you’re trimming the flower the way the grower wants it to be trimmed. Handling the flower roughly, or chopping the leaves off the flower like it’s a haircut is one of the easiest ways to get fired from a trim crew. If you don’t have the patience to selectively trim each leaf off the bud, perhaps machine trimming is a better option for you.
How should trimmed cannabis be handled post-processing to maintain quality?
There are several ways to store trimmed cannabis. Most common for the smaller grows is mason jars. By the time the flower is ready to be trimmed, it’s ready to be cured. Smaller grows will use larger mason jars to store their trimmed cannabis so they can occasionally burp the jars and really get those terpenes popping. Larger farms will have their trimmers toss trimmed flower straight into a turkey bag or something similar. As long as your flower is stored in a cool dark place, it should cure up nicely regardless of the vessel you store it in. The important thing to remember is to make sure to carefully move or rotate the flower in the bag or jar anytime you burp it.
What do you look for when inspecting trimmed buds for quality? Do you use magnification?
Magnification can be used if you’re really serious about your trim. Everyone kind of has their own preferences when it comes to what they are looking for in a trimmed flower. The industry standards for quality trim are no crow’s feet, very few bald spots (if any), and very little loose leaf that could break away from the flower and create what we call “duff” at the bottom of a bag when trimming cannabis. Trichome preservation should be a given. If you’re working with experienced trimmers, they should know proper flower handling etiquette and the trichomes should be as preserved as possible with a hand trim.
How can trimmers stay focused and productive during long trimming sessions?
The best advice we can give to maintain productivity in the trim space is if anything going on in the background, whether it’s a movie playing or music, it should be something you’ve seen or heard a thousand times. Don’t put on a movie that you’ve been excited to watch because this will pull your eyes away from your work more often than you think. Being that many trimmers get paid by the pound of trimmed flower, distractions like this could cost you a pretty penny each day. Posture is key. Your trim table should be at the right height so you don’t feel the need to hunch or slouch your back to see the flower you’re working on.
What tools do trimmers need to have? Is there a specific brand of scissors or gloves or anything that you recommend?
Farmers Defense arm sleeves are an absolute must if you’re part of the harvest team. Aprons, a box of gloves in your size, three pairs of back up scissors, and a pair of your favorite scissors like Chikamasa, ARS, or Fiskars Titanium snips, a glass of isopropyl alcohol to dop your snips in, and an apron are all smart things to have before you start trimming.
Anything else that you feel is important? Feel free to fill us in on any crucial content you think other trimmers or their growers should know.
We just want to remind any growers that are reading this that although growing cannabis is not an easy job, trimming it isn’t either. Try to remember that your trim crew is performing one of the most tedious and mind-numbing tasks for you. The happier your trim crew is, the higher the quality of trimmed flower you’ll get. Take good care of them. Random acts of kindness go a long way with your trim crew. Perhaps buy everyone lunch every once in a while, and don’t forget to express how good of a job they’re doing (if it’s warranted!).
In praise of hand-trimming.
Oriah Love has been in the cannabis game for a long-time and has worked at a few
high-end boutique cannabis facilities such as Geek Farms as well as having worked alongside renowned PNW grower Adam Jacques. Love’s style of trimming is slow, meticulous, and highly detailed to try to preserve as much trichome on the flower as possible. “My whole philosophy is quality over everything,” Love says, “and that doesn’t jibe with most people’s business models, when it all comes down to brass tacks.”
What is a pace that you are happy with?
I am happy if a trimmer is trimming things to quality and they can hit one pound per day. Trimming is a harder job than people give it credit for. They treat it like an entry level job but if you’re not careful with trimming you can significantly lower the quality of your flower after it’s harvested. I would bet that 60 to 70% of that lowering in quality happens on the trim table. For me and a lot of other smaller companies, they’re trying to build their brand and their name around quality that is unattainable by giant corporations. If you’re not one of the giant corporations then you should be focusing on quality over everything because otherwise, if you’re trying to compete with those corporations in other ways, it’s just not going to work.
How did you learn how to trim?
Through trial and error. I watched some videos and trimmed our own flower. We got our medical cards back in the day and were growing our own medicine and we trimmed it in-house. Luckily, the people that I was mentoring at the time, with small-scale personal grows, were starting off with quality in mind, doing it by hand. Then once I started working at a commercial facility, the whole thing scaled up but we were really still trying to focus on quality over everything. We had a trim crew that was bigger than the whole rest of the team combined.
How does the math work out for smaller versus larger trim crews?
Going faster with a smaller number of people means you’re probably using some sort of trim machine. A three-person team with a trim machine can out trim 15 people who are hand-trimming. But if you take the exact same flower and trim it in those two ways, you’ll instantly end up with two entirely different grades of flower. The one that went through the machine is going to look beat up. It really just comes down to what a person’s focus is, and usually people are trying to keep up with the rest of the market. People are trying to cut costs everywhere and a lot of the time trimming is like the first place they look to, which downgrades their quality, big time. A race to the bottom is not what small businesses should do, in my opinion. I think people need to be doing everything they can to go in the other direction, to grow and preserve and strive every single harvest for better and better quality.
What do you look for in a good trimmer?
You just have to watch them and see how they work for a while and if they’ll follow directions. I want someone who will be attentive and watch how I’m doing it, pay attention to the details, and then do it exactly like that. First, somebody has to learn how we want it done, which means us showing them. And do it slowly. So you get it done right first, and then as you go through the motions of doing it correctly, you’ll naturally get faster.
What do you focus on with trimming?
The thing that people need to focus on when they’re getting ready to trim is how the flower actually bucks down to the point where it’s ready for the trimmer. What you want is at least a half inch, if not more, like an inch of stem still connected to that bud just below it so that it’s like a little handle. That way you can hold on to that handle and trim it well and not touch the bud. I’ve heard people call that a “boutique trim.”
That also involves training the people that are harvesting for you, focusing on trimming cannabis.
Yes, it does. That portion happens after it’s dry. You chop it down and into sections for your bins, a crucial step in how to trim cannabis. Most trimming facilities do not want to do that, because that totally slows down their workflow and they are working by the pound. To me, the other main thing is paying people by the hour rather than by the weight, because then they are more likely to actually focus on doing it correctly, rather than trying to blaze through it and cut corners while trimming cannabis buds.
When people are cutting corners, what happens?
A lot of times people end up getting really close to the bud, like right on it, with the scissors, and basically do what is called sculpting. And what you’re doing is literally cutting crystals off the whole outside in order to shape this into something you think it’s supposed to look like. The whole idea is to preserve that crystal and preserve the flower as it has dried on the outside rather than demolishing it, an important part of trimming cannabis.
What are your tips on staying focused and having fun?
We have mats that people stand on. We set it up so that people’s trays could be taller if they wanted to stand. Being able to switch back and forth from sitting to standing throughout the day actually helps a lot. Staying focused, perhaps on how to trim cannabis, to me means a podcast or an audio book or turning the radio on. A lot of times people like to listen to the same thing together.
Your overall message is “slow down.”
Attention to detail is the difference between your average flower on a shelf and something that could win a Cannabis Cup. Pretend that you’re going to give this bud to Willie Nelson or Snoop Dogg. You want it to look as good as it could possibly be. If it’s good enough for them, then it’s good enough for the brand, you know? That’s where I’m at personally, especially with trimming cannabis buds.
