Why Grow Your Own Weed? The Real Benefits of Home Growing

Growing your own weed pays off in three big ways: over time it's cheaper than buying flower, you get to pick exactly which strains you smoke, and you know every single thing that went into your buds. Beyond the stash, it's a genuinely rewarding hobby. You'll need some gear, but the one thing you can't skip is the motivation to see it through.

In the long run, home growing beats buying medical cannabis on price. You can start on pretty much any budget, and the gap between buying flower and growing it yourself is huge. A well-grown plant can put out up to around 500 g (about 1 lb) of dried, cured buds, and with a controlled indoor grow you can pull off several successful harvests a year.

You choose the strains you grow

Growing your own cannabis lets you pick exactly which strains you want to smoke. You're in full control of the growing conditions and the growing medium. When you buy weed, you have no idea how those plants were raised. As the grower, you decide which pesticides and fertilizers to use, or you go fully organic, and either way you know exactly what you're feeding the plant.

Home growing lets you experiment with methods

When you run the grow yourself, you get to experiment with different growing methods. Growing your own also gives you a much better understanding of the plant, and a real appreciation for what it takes to bring one to harvest.

These days, growing at home is easier than ever. There's a ton of solid info out there for rookie and veteran growers alike. From an indoor grow tent to automatic watering and lighting systems, everything you need is easy to find online or at your local grow shop.

Growing your own also means you're never caught without. In countries with no dispensaries, or where weed still isn't legal, a home grow keeps you out of the illegal market and away from drug trafficking. Growing cannabis at home is legal in Argentina, for example, but you need a permit to do it. More on that below.

Home-grown medical cannabis: better quality

With a home grow you don't just get quality buds. You can use the whole plant and turn it into other things, like oils or creams.

Another big upside: you know what condition your weed is in. If disease, mold or any other problem shows up in a personal grow, you'll catch it and deal with it far more easily. Massive commercial grows are a different story. When plants are farmed by the thousands, the whole crop rarely gets watered evenly, so deficiencies and overfeeding creep in easily. That opens the door to pests and disease, and none of it necessarily stops a grower from selling that harvest anyway, if that was the plan all along.

And it's not just that the plant might carry pathogens. Smoking weed in bad shape, or weed loaded with insecticides and similar chemicals, can take a toll on your health.

Last but not least, growing is a lot of fun and seriously relaxing. Spending time with your plants gets you closer to nature, and that's good for you.

How do you grow medical cannabis legally at home in Argentina?

A lot of people ask whether home growing is legal in Argentina. It is. To do it, you need a grow card: REPROCANN, Argentina's medical cannabis registry.

REPROCANN is a database built to register everyone who meets the requirements for a controlled cannabis grow for medical, therapeutic and/or palliative pain treatment. Once you're approved, you get a permit to grow. So legal home growing does exist in Argentina, but you have to meet the requirements and follow the rules.

Who can register a grow under REPROCANN?

Argentine residents can sign up for REPROCANN if they meet these conditions:

• They have a doctor's recommendation
• They've signed the required consent form, under the terms set by the program.
• They've completed the requirements and paperwork the program asks for

The system then verifies your details through the Argentine government site https://www.argentina.gob.ar/miargentina. For that, you need an account on the site or on the Mi Argentina app.

The cool part is that you don't have to register yourself, as if it were a strictly personal errand. A family member, a third party or a civil organization authorized by the enforcement authority can do it on your behalf.

On top of that, Argentina's national Ministry of Health charges nothing for registration, so it's completely free. Fun fact: under the rules at the time of writing (check the current ones before you apply), each patient is allowed up to 9 flowering plants and can carry up to 40 g (about 1.4 oz) of dried flower or 6 dropper bottles of 30 ml.

As you can see, growing your own weed comes with a whole list of benefits. It's also therapeutic: it turns into a hobby, and as you go you keep learning new things about your plant. Little by little you dial in your technique and raise the quality of your herb, along with plenty of other skills that look simple on paper but get trickier once you actually put them into practice.

Finally, let's not forget the best part: the end result is yours. You made it with your own effort and dedication, giving all the love you can to a plant as loyal as cannabis.