Home Growers Corner
How to Make Hash at Home
First,“ Never throw away your Sugar Leaves!”
Part 4 of Series
by Gerry Donovan, contributing writer
This month, we’ ll cover part 4 of my micro series on the“ Life-Stages of the Cannabis Plant.” If you missed previous parts, please visit The EVOLUTION Magazine online at www. theevolutionmag. com to read the concise breakdown articles in the May through July issues about“ Adolescence, Adulthood, and Harvesting / Drying.”
Those are the leaves that grow close to, out of, and in between the buds that are covered in Trichomes. Trichomes are the snowy, crystallooking protuberances on leaves and bud sites that contain many of the beneficial oils and compounds we, as cannabis consumers and growers, are trying to get our plants to produce.
Obviously, after your buds are harvested and dry, you can smoke them. What are your other options? You can process your bud material into edibles or hash. However, if you’ ll recall, every time I have talked about harvesting or pre-harvest defoliation, I have always said,“ Never throw away your sugar leaves.” I generally just smoke my bud material and use my extra sugar leaves to make hash as a little bonus to my harvest. If I am making edibles, I use dried bud.
Note about hash: Many folks have a distorted or false understanding of what hash actually is. It is also a debate that can be had amongst those in the industry, but I’ m going to give you my take on the term.
Hash is an overarching term that can be used to classify all forms of concentrated cannabis( more precisely, concentrated cannabis trichomes). First, I have to say that hash is NOT opium. I have heard this assertion too many times not to mention it. Although some forms of these substances look similar, they are completely different and are in no way related.
These photos show the trichomes, which are the snowy, crystal-looking protuberances on leaves and bud sites.
Photos of Sugar Leaves
Many older consumers are familiar with North African, Indian, and Middle Eastern hash. Since that form of cannabis was a common method of consumption in those regions, it made its way to Europe and, eventually, some found its way to American consumers. Usually hard and brown( generally lower quality) or soft and yellow( generally higher quality), this style of hash, although very potent, was far less pure than today’ s concentrates, largely due to plant material left over from manual collection and processing methods ranging from beating entire plants on sifter drums to having workers run through cannabis fields and then scraping the sticky plant material off of them. Yuk! Today, many lab and commercial-grade processing methods produce very pure concentrates in many forms, from pure diamonds to live resins.
At home, with your leftover homegrown sugar leaves, you can very easily make super high-grade hash / concentrates. The two methods I will focus on are Sift Hash and Ice Hash. However, before we get into those, here’ s a quick refresher about“ sugar leaves.”
Lower Fan Leaves( throw away)
Trash Leaves
Sugar Leaves( keep)
Hash Leaves( keep)
22 August 2026