Trim

Trim refers both to the post-harvest horticultural operation of excising non-inflorescence tissue — primarily large fan leaves and smaller trichome-bearing sugar leaves — from freshly cut or dried cannabis flowers to produce a clean, marketable bud, and to the leafy by-product itself, which retains appreciable cannabinoid and terpene content and is typically diverted to extraction (Punja et al. 2019). Two protocols are recognized in commercial practice: wet trim, performed immediately after harvest when turgor is high and leaves protrude perpendicularly from the bract (facilitating clean cuts and faster drying), and dry trim, performed after hang-drying when fan leaves have curled inward, protecting trichomes from mechanical abrasion and slowing terpene volatilization (Chandra et al. 2017). Dry trimming is generally favored in craft production for terpene retention, while wet trimming suits high-throughput operations using mechanical bowl or tumble trimmers. Etymology: Middle English trimmen, "to make neat." Synonyms/slang: manicuring, buffing, "sugar leaf." → See also: Trim, Shake, Kief, Extract (Products), Trichome, Sugar leaf.