Growing your own medicine outdoors? Come learn how to rinse and wash cannabis buds after harvest using lemon juice and baking soda, or hydrogen peroxide. It’s easy to do, 100% organic, and effectively helps remove potentially harmful debris while still maintaining maximum quality of your cannabis flower. Cleaner herb equals a more smooth, safe, and tasty end product – whether you’re using it for tinctures, edibles, topicals, or to smoke!

Should I wash cannabis buds after harvest?

While not mandatory, it’s definitely a good idea to wash cannabis flower buds that were grown outside. The process reduces outdoor air pollutants that may have accumulated on the buds such as dirt, dust, pollen, toxic wildfire ash, caterpillar poop, insects, bird debris, and other particulate matter. You certainly want to avoid inhaling or ingesting all that stuff if possible.

If you think about it, you wash fresh produce before eating it, right? We always do, even our organic homegrown produce from the garden. So why not wash your buds? Especially considering our lungs are far more sensitive and susceptible to harm from contaminants than our guts are.

Since it’s so resinous, sticky cannabis flowers are particularly good at attracting and holding on to pollutants. That said, cannabis isn’t as easy to simply rinse off with water as other plants are. Yet the bud washing process we’ll show you today does an excellent job at dislodging and stripping contaminants without harming trichomes or terpenes.

It’s not usually necessary to wash cannabis that’s grown indoors, unless you’ve used foliar sprays that you’d prefer to rinse off before consuming the flower (though foliar sprays are usually not recommended during the flower phase anyways).

A close up of the water from the wash bucket used to wash cannabis. It is brownish yellow in color and has various debris floating in it from plant debris, dirt, and some bugs. — Look how dirty the water got after washing only 1/4 of the plant!

Does washing cannabis flower cause mold?

No, washing your cannabis buds shouldn’t cause mold – as long as you spread it out to thoroughly air dry that is, and don’t leave it in a wet heap after washing. Note that washing cannabis buds does add a couple days of drying time to your post-harvest routine. We’ll talk more about how to properly dry cannabis after washing below.

On the other hand, the baking soda and lemon juice used to wash cannabis can kill mold spores and therefore may help prevent mold from growing during drying, curing and storage. However, washing cannabis will not remove advanced mold or “bud rot” that is already present at the time of harvest. We don’t recommend using, consuming, or inhaling obviously moldy cannabis. Cannabis with only a small amount of mold on the plant (e.g. powdery mildew on the leaves, not moldy buds) could still be used for topical applications, such as homemade cannabis salve.

Why baking soda and lemon juice?

Often described as an “old school organic produce wash”, baking soda and lemon juice has been used to remove impurities from fruits and vegetables (and even greasy kitchens) for many decades. The mixture acts as a natural surfactant that gently encourages dirt, dust, and other debris to dislodge from deep within the plant.

Lemon juice is a natural antimicrobial and baking soda is mildly anti-fungal. When combined, they create a chemical reaction that neutralizes the solution and generates non-toxic carbon dioxide gas. This appears as fizz and bubbles that further help deep clean your bud! Hydrogen peroxide acts very similarly, is safe and organic, and can be used to wash cannabis as well.

A box of baking soda sits next to a quart jar of organic lemon juice. Beyond there are three five gallon buckets lined up in a row.

Does washing bud decrease cannabinoids or trichomes?

Cannabinoids are fat-soluble; they only like to attach themselves to fats – like oil. Thus, this gentle wash will not strip the cannabinoids or decrease the potency of your flower. Try not to bang the branches into the sides of the bucket too much while washing, but also keep in mind that the few loose trichomes that may get knocked off during washing would’ve likely fallen off during the trimming and drying process anyways.

Supplies needed for bud washing

3 five-gallon buckets (or similar)
water
½ cup baking soda and ½ cup lemon juice
OR 1 cup of hydrogen peroxide (3% strength)

*Note: Some cannabis bud washing recipes call for as little as ¼ cup of lemon juice and baking soda each, while others say to use 1 cup of each. We feel that ½ cup of each is more than enough to adequately clean the cannabis, but not be overly strong or wasteful. An alternative bud washing method uses 1 cup of 3% household hydrogen peroxide (per 5 gallons of water) in the “wash” bucket instead of lemon juice and baking soda, which is also effective. Use what you have!

Three five gallon buckets are lined up with writing superimposed on the photo underneath each bucket. The first bucket is labeled as: "Wash"= Warm water + 1/2 cup lemon juice and 1/2 baking soda (OR 1 cup 3% hydrogen peroxide and water). Under the second bucket is labeled as: Rinse = Clean cool water. Under the final bucket is labeled as: Final Rinse = clean cool water.

INSTRUCTIONS

Prep

Clean three 5-gallon buckets. The first bucket is for the cannabis “wash”, followed by two “rinse” buckets.
Gather your plant material. It will be easiest to both wash and dry if you leave the branches as large as possible, but still cut short enough to fit completely inside the buckets (e.g. don’t cut it down into too many small pieces or individual buds yet). You can also roughly trim off leaves now, or wait until after washing. Removing at least some of the larger fan leaves upfront will help expedite drying.

Fill the first bucket with warm water (not hot), and the other two with tepid or cool water. The warm water helps the baking soda and lemon juice dissolve and mix. We fill the warm bucket in our laundry room sink, but if you don’t have access to a large sink or hot water outside, add a couple tea kettles of hot water to a bucket of otherwise cold water.

A branch of cannabis is held above the 3 buckets used to wash and rinse cannabis. — A good size branch for dunking and washing. The cannabis we’re washing in this demo is admittedly not our nicest or fattest flower. This was a gangly hemp (CBD) plant that was starting to show signs of bud rot in some places (which were discarded) so we harvested the rest early to salvage what we could to make topical salve.

Get the cleanest, most tasty vaporizing experience here!

Wash & Rinse

In the first 5-gallon bucket, add ½ cup of baking soda and ½ cup of lemon juice to the warm water and stir. It should fizz and bubble. (Or, add 1 cup of hydrogen peroxide instead).
Dunk, swirl, and rapidly wiggle the cannabis in the first wash bucket for about 30 seconds. Then hold it up over the bucket to drip off excess liquid and give it a few shakes.
Next, submerge and swirl the branches in the second bucket to rinse, then rinse one final time in the 3rd clean bucket of water. 15 seconds in each rinse bucket is adequate. This washes off remaining impurities as well as the baking soda and lemon juice residue.

A cannabis branch is being dunked in the first wash bucket. Its flowers and leaves are submerged in the wash as it is lightly swirled and dunked around. — Wash by quickly agitating the plant material in the bucket

A branch of cannabis is being held above the wash bucket to allow to drip before proceeding to the next bucket. — Drip and shake before rinsing

A branch of cannabis is being submerged in the wash bucket while another branch is being submerged in the second bucket, or the first rinse bucket. — Aaron washed while I rinsed. Teamwork makes the dream work.

Three white 5 gallon buckets are lined up in a row. The top wash bucket water is brownish yellow with various debris floating in it. The middle bucket is the first rinse bucket and is fairly clean with smaller amount of debris. The third bucket is the final rinse bucket and is relatively clear with some small bits of debris. — After washing

Dry

After giving each one a good shake, hang the washed cannabis branches outdoors to drip dry for a few hours (up to 24 hours). For the best quality, choose a shady well-ventilated location out of direct sunlight. A nearby fan (but not blasting right on them) will provide additional airflow to expedite drying, as will trimming off leaves. For smaller branches or buds, consider using an herb drying rack.
Finally, proceed with drying and curing the cannabis as you normally would.

10 or 12 branches of cannabis hanging from a black metal railing as they drip dry after washing. Beyond is a group of oak trees and a few of the buckets used to wash the cannabis. — We let these drip dry here for a few hours, removed most of the large fan leaves, and then brought them into our insulated attic (with a fan on nearby). We left the branches whole for a few days, then started breaking them down into buds to finish drying on these herb drying racks.

That’s all there is to it! Isn’t it satisfying to see that gross dirty water, and know that isn’t in your bud anymore? If you found this information to be useful, please consider leaving a rating below – or sharing this post! If you need any tips more tips on when and how to harvest, trim, dry, cure and store you cannabis, check out this guide. Otherwise, have fun and enjoy your harvest!

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