Smoking marijuana can be fun but it often leaves behind a lot of byproducts that one isn’t always sure what they should do with. For example, some of the most common things left behind by smoking weed are weed stems and weed seeds. Most people who smoke weed are looking to recycle all of their leftovers as byproducts of cannabis often have their own value that can be utilized in different products or further smoking or absorption experiences. If you have been throwing away these parts of the marijuana bud but have been curious as to whether or not they can be used in their own way, take a look at the article below to learn more about how these weed stems and seeds can be used after you finish smoking all of your cannabis flowers.
What Are Weed Stems and Seeds?
Weed stems and seeds are parts of the plant that you will definitely encounter at some point in your smoking journey. Stems are some of the most common parts of the plant that the flowers are attached to and you will easily be able to spot these parts of the plant as they are long, skinny, and are separate from the buds themselves. (This can be easily seen once the bud is removed from the rest of the plant matter.) While you will not commonly find seeds in your marijuana, this does happen on occasion and you will see these pop up as small brown, solid objects that aren’t any normal part of the weed plant that you would be able to identify. Both of these parts of the weed plant can be found in your bud and these are the two that we will focus on throughout this article.
Can You Smoke Weed Stems?
If you’ve ever been curious or in a situation where you were running low on weed and unable to get more, you have most likely thought to yourself, can I smoke these weed stems? Regardless of whether or not you have gone the extra mile and tried it out, the answer to this question is, absolutely not. Smoking weed stems is not recommended for several reasons. Here are a couple of the main ones.
It Can Cause Headaches
Weed stems are notorious for giving users bad headaches and ones that are known to linger. This is especially true if you are someone who is prone to developing headaches or migraines throughout the day. If you are trying to avoid getting a headache or a migraine, smoking weed stems is not a good idea.
It’s Bad for Every Part of Your Body
From the mouth to the lungs, weed stems are not human-friendly. First, they taste terrible and provide no pleasure for those who smoke them. Once in the body, the smoke is as bad as tobacco smoke and is even more dangerous due to the fact that it constricts airways because it is not meant to be smoked. Even the digestive system is affected. Once the smoke enters your body, you open yourself up to the possibility of nausea, vomiting, and stomach pains. Overall, smoking weed stems provides no health benefits or desirable effects.
It Contains No THC
If you’ve read all of the above information and are still tempted to try it out, know that stems contain no THC. That’s right! Weed stems have no visible levels of THC and will not give you the psychoactive high that you are looking for. When combined with the side effects above, it is clear to see why smoking weed stems is not desirable for anyone.
What Can You Do With Them?
So, if you are unable to smoke them, what can you do with your leftover weed stems? It turns out that weed stems can be reused in a number of ways so that you can benefit from them as well as your cannabis. Here are a few of the most common ways that stems are reused.
Make Cannabutter With Stems
You may be thinking, how will cannabutter be a useful product if the stems contain almost no THC? True, while weed stems do not have a high level of THC, it takes quite a bit of the material in order to make your own products and the cumulative effect of all the material will help to provide a more mild effect for users. Typically, you will have to heat the plant stems for a while on their own and then heat them in the butter of your choice to make sure that the active ingredients go into the substance. However, you will be able to find your own recipe after researching the topic online.
Cocktails
Most people will settle for smoking and drinking but if you feel a bit adventurous, you can add a little something extra to your liquor. As with making cannabis butter, you typically have to heat up your plant matter and add it to the alcohol and let it settle for a bit so that it properly mixed together. It is a good idea to find a recipe that speaks to you before you begin as the wrong mixture can result in wasted alcohol or you may find that your chosen mixture doesn’t taste as great as you initially thought.
Stem Hash Oil
You can easily take the above ideas to make a hash oil that can be used for vaping or for taking directly for different benefits. With these kinds of products, you generally have to first heat the plant matter and then add it to your choice of oil. Once it is combined, you will let heat and mix for a couple of hours and then filter out all of the plant material. Then you have an oil that can be further mixed or used directly!
Make Cannabis Tea or Hot Cocoa
Another unlikely product to think about when you are looking at your weed stems, cannabis teas and hot cocoas can be made using your leftover stems. These products are easy to make as well. All you have to do is heat up the plant matter and then apply it to your teabag or add it to a hot chocolate mix with a fatty oil. If the flavor is too overpowering, simply add more flavoring until it’s less detectable.
Bubble Hash
If you have some extra time on your hands, you may want to look into making bubble hash. Bubble hash is a type of hash that is produced when frozen plant matter is added to cold water to separate the psychoactive ingredients from the physical material. It then goes through several filtering processes to get a more concentrated form of THC. This is a time-consuming process but one that you may want to look into if you want to get the most out of your leftover weed stems.
Make a Hemp Wick
Whether you’re a candle-lover or someone who prefers to use hemp wicks as a way to light your bud so that you don’t have to deal with the negative effects of butane, you can make candle wick out of your weed stems as well. While the process is a little more complicated than the simple description we will provide, all you have to do is strip down your weed stems into smaller fibers, twist them around each other, and secure them using beeswax. You now have a healthy, safe wick to burn when you need a flame!
Make Your Own Topical
Remember how we recommended that you make your own oils earlier in the article? You can use this same method to make your own topicals that can then be rubbed in the skin to provide certain benefits. You can take the oil that you make and then add it to other essential massage oils or combine it with lotions and creams that you can rub on your body once the mixture sets.
What Can I Do With My Seeds?
As with weed stems, cannabis seeds are relatively versatile. Whether you want to start growing your weed plants or sell your seeds (make sure that this is legal in the state that you live in first), prepare the seeds and eat them as you would with hemp seeds, or try to extract the oils in the seeds, you are guaranteed to find a way to get the most out of your marijuana seeds so that you are not forced to throw them away and waste them.
Conclusion
The best part about cannabis is that you would be hard-pressed to find any part of the plant that couldn’t be used for something else. If you have been specifically looking for ways to use that ever-growing pile of weed stems and seeds that you have been gathering, the ideas provided above should be more than enough to get you started.
