Suppose that, with great efforts, you passed the growing test. Suppose that you have managed to harvest a beautiful plantation of marijuana with a heap of overflowing plants with resinous buds. You can barely believe it. You’ve always been a disaster and an Attila the Hun of crops. Nonetheless, this time it looks like you’ve done it. Well don’t count your chickens yet. There are still plenty of ways to mess up your Mary J and, after countless sleepless nights, turn that coveted first drag into a frustrating experience that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. We’ll give you a couple of tips: 1. Skip the manicure.

1. Missing the trimming

We know that it’s a pain and that it requires a lot of time and tender care, but if you hang your plants to dry with all their leaves, these will provide too much humidity to the buds, preventing them from drying correctly. That’s if they don’t also bring along fungi and/or mites that may wreck your entire harvest. Manicuring is easier before drying but you can also do it afterwards.

2. Dry plants in the sun.

They do this often in Morocco, which explains the low quality of their marijuana despite the large tracts set aside for cultivation and the benign climate. Direct sunlight degrades THC and excess heat hastens the process too much, causing a loss of between 20-30% in its potency. Proper drying should take from three to four weeks in a dark, dry and well-ventilated place. We recommend a curing process in wooden or metal boxes so the buds finish drying completely, ventilating the box daily for at least another week.

But now let’s assume that you did this right too. Now you have first-class marijuana in your glass jars, ready to be smoked. Nothing could happen to mess this up, or could it? The answer is yes, you could always…

3. Smoke it mixed with dark tobacco.

It’s just about the worst thing you can do with good marijuana. It turns it into an awful dust devil that it reminds you of the post-war and destroys all of its aromas and nuances. Disgusting.

4. Roll a joint with notebook paper.

Another nasty, old trick. Alright, we’ve all ran out of papers at an inopportune moment, but if you were patient enough to grow, manicure, dry and cure your marijuana correctly, you should have the same patience and wait for the smoke shop to open. Or a Chinese store, they open earlier.

5. Use too much in a cake.

We recently saw an incident in the news about group food poisoning involving a cake. It’s much harder to calculate the effects of orally ingested cannabis. They take longer to appear and can be much stronger, with panic attacks and paranoia. If the marijuana is good, a teaspoon per person could do the trick. When it doubt, don’t overdo it.

Surely, if you’re clumsy enough, you’ll find your own way to fu... screw up your weed, as fantastic as it may be. At least it won’t be because we didn’t warn you.