The last two weeks of work, which decide more about the result than most of the months before them. When to cut, how to dry slowly enough to matter, and what curing actually changes inside a sealed jar.
Harvest timing is read from the trichomes rather than from the breeder’s day count, and the window is a preference rather than a point: earlier is brighter and more alert, later is heavier and more sedating. After the cut, the job is to remove water slowly and evenly at a moderate temperature, because a fast dry locks chlorophyll and grassy compounds into the flower and no amount of curing afterwards will take them out.
Two things go wrong most often in this climate. Ambient humidity makes a controlled dry impossible without a dedicated space, and a room that swings between wet afternoons and dry nights produces a case-hardened flower that is dry outside and wet at the stem. And the drying room is where grey mould finishes a crop that survived the grow, so airflow and daily inspection do not stop at the cut.
Where to start
Related elsewhere on the forum: Botrytis (Grey Mould): The Silent Bud Killer in Botrytis.