There was a time when growing marijuana in Southern California seemed almost too easy. We have sunshine, warm temperatures, long growing seasons, and enough dry weather to make plants from wetter parts of the country look at us with envy. Surely, I thought, if people can grow tomatoes here, growing marijuana for medicinal purposes should be a piece of cake.
It was not.
My first mistake was assuming that sunshine automatically made me a gardener. It turns out that the sun is only one of the many things a cannabis plant needs, and occasionally it seems determined to provide far too much of it. Southern California has a wonderful climate for growing things, but it also has heat, dry air, Santa Ana winds, pests, and the occasional weather event that seems specifically designed to make a gardener question every decision that led them to this point.
My first attempts were a mixture of optimism and ignorance. I watched the plants grow, admired the leaves, congratulated myself on my obvious horticultural abilities, and waited for the promised harvest. The plants, unfortunately, were not nearly as impressed with me as I was with myself.
Some grew beautifully. Others didn’t. A few seemed to have made a private decision that producing anything resembling useful medicine was beneath them. There were plants that looked healthy one week and suddenly seemed to be auditioning for the role of “Dead Plant” the next. I learned that there is a considerable difference between keeping a plant alive and actually growing a healthy crop.
Then there were the pests.
Apparently, I was not the only one who had noticed that cannabis plants could be attractive. Various tiny creatures discovered my garden and treated it as an all-you-can-eat restaurant. I spent an unreasonable amount of time inspecting leaves, looking for suspicious spots, holes, discolorations, and other evidence that somebody had been having lunch without paying.
Heat was another lesson. Southern California sunshine is wonderful until it isn’t. A plant can be perfectly happy in the morning and look considerably less enthusiastic after an afternoon of intense summer heat. Watering became a balancing act. Too little and the plants complained. Too much and they complained in an entirely different way.
Eventually I began to understand that successful growing was less about doing one thing perfectly and more about paying attention. The plants had a surprising amount to say if I bothered to look. Leaves drooped. Leaves changed color. Growth slowed. New growth appeared. Problems developed gradually rather than magically appearing overnight.
And then, occasionally, everything worked.
Those were the good years—or, more accurately, the good plants. Watching a healthy plant develop from a tiny beginning into something substantial was enormously satisfying. There was something particularly rewarding about knowing that I had started with a seed or young plant and eventually produced something that could actually be used for the purpose I had intended.
The failures were useful, too.
A failed plant is an excellent teacher because it has no problem making its opinions known. I learned not to assume that every problem had the same solution. I learned that more water isn’t necessarily better, more fertilizer isn’t necessarily better, and more attention isn’t necessarily better. Sometimes the best thing a gardener can do is stop interfering.
I also learned that growing for medicinal purposes added another layer to the whole experiment. It wasn’t simply a matter of producing something that looked impressive. Quality, consistency, cleanliness, and knowing what I actually ended up with mattered far more than having enormous plants.
California’s laws have also changed considerably over the years. Today, adults 21 and older can generally grow up to six cannabis plants at home under state law, while medicinal users may have additional allowances under certain circumstances; cities and counties can impose additional rules. So anyone considering home cultivation needs to check the rules that apply where they actually live rather than relying on something they remember from ten years ago.
Looking back, I wouldn’t describe my experience as either a spectacular success or a complete failure. It was somewhere in between—which, coincidentally, is where most of my gardening seems to take place.
I grew some good plants. I killed some good plants. I learned a great deal. I spent money on things I probably didn’t need. I worried about plants that probably didn’t need me to worry about them. And I discovered that growing cannabis in Southern California is not nearly as simple as putting a plant in the ground and waiting for the sun to do the rest.
The biggest success, perhaps, wasn’t the harvest (which this particular season didn’t happen at all). It was learning that gardening is a process of observation, experimentation, failure, adjustment, and occasionally getting lucky. The plants were supposed to teach me about growing marijuana. Instead, they taught me that I still have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. Which, after all these years, is probably the most reliable result I’ve ever managed to grow.