How to Grow Weed at Home: Cultivating the Right Mindset

Ellen Lee Scanlon (00:00):

This podcast discusses cannabis and is intended for audiences 21 and over.

Sandra Guynes (00:06):

Living amongst the cannabis plant is like, that’s the benefit in itself. I always tell my husband when we’re not growing plants, it’s so boring here. I know that sounds silly, but it’s just like, they have such great energy. The aromas are in the room. You have a purpose because you got to check on these plans. For people who are depressed or anxious, this can really be very therapeutic, very helpful just to be around the plants and the aromas and terpenes of the plants just by inhaling them. Because our nose is the only sense connected to our brain, we start to feel those therapeutic effects just from being around the plants.

Ellen Lee Scanlon (00:44):

Welcome back to How to Do the Pot. A podcast demystifying cannabis for women. I’m Ellen Scanlon. You just heard from Sandra Guynes, a California-based nurse, also known as the Kush Nurse, about why she loves growing cannabis at home. On today’s episode, we’re going to dig into why you might want to grow weed, why women love to share the cannabis they grow and how to cultivate the right mindset for this gardening project. Whether you can grow cannabis at home depends a lot on where you live, so please check your state laws. We have a list on our website, dothepot.com with the most recent information on states that allow home grows and I’ll link to it in the show notes. In our next few episodes, we’re going to share all the best tips for growing at home, from some great cannabis experts. It’s been fascinating to hear different women’s perspectives on this. And I know that it’s really helped me appreciate the agricultural side of the weed that you can buy in the store.

Ellen Lee Scanlon (01:44):

I hope these episodes will feel maybe like a farm visit, a really fun way to spend some time and then you can decide if you want to try growing yourself. Are you on the list for How to Do the Pot’s newsletter? You can sign up at dothepot.com and please follow dothepot on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter for updates. And as always, if you like How to Do the Pot, please rate and review us on Apple Podcast. It helps more people find the show. Kelsey Ledezma and her sister Kendra Stocking, who works for the cannabis company, Old Pal, are actually my inspiration for heading down the rabbit hole that is learning about growing weed at home. Kelsey explains how they started growing.

Kelsey Ledezma (02:31):

My floral business actually started with my fiancé and I doing a lot of gardening just for fun. And then one day I opened up my sock drawer and saw all these weed seeds that I had collected over the years for no reason, just kept throwing them in there, right? And the thing was seeds, like anybody who gardens knows that seeds are supposed to be kept dark and dry, you don’t want them getting wet or anything. So a sock drawer was like a perfect place to keep them over the course of probably eight years. And we happened to have all these gardening supplies and we had the seeds and we thought, why not? Let’s give it a shot.

Ellen Lee Scanlon (03:08):

Kelsey and Kendra started their growing project with help from their family and a lot of DIY research.

Kelsey Ledezma (03:15):

My fiancé did a lot of research into it and he kind of naturally has a green thumb too. So it was just a lot of research and going off our gut feeling and how it looked compared to what people were saying it should look like. And YouTube, oh my gosh, YouTube. YouTube is a wealth of information for anything but especially for growing weed.

Ellen Lee Scanlon (03:36):

They started growing inside from cannabis seeds, with a small set-up of lights, but were pretty quickly able to move their plants outside.

Kelsey Ledezma (03:43):

We kept them in a closet that was lit. I remember them actually popping up real easy. They popped out of their little soil bucket, little, tiny buckets we had them in and they were like, “I am here and I’m ready to grow,” and they wanted to grow. I mean, that’s why we call it weed, right? But as they grew, eventually they just became outdoor plants. And we just watered them a lot and replanted them to get them bigger and bigger. And there was no coaxing them to grow, they wanted to, they responded really well to all of the environments we put them in. And we didn’t have a problem getting them to the size they were, that’s for sure.

Ellen Lee Scanlon (04:25):

They had a few things going in their favor too.

Kendra Stocking (04:27):

We were living in the desert too, so we were in Palmdale, where it’s warm and hot all the time.

Ellen Lee Scanlon (04:35):

Their plants yielded a lot of weed. So one of their favorite parts of growing was being able to share it.

Kendra Stocking (04:41):

We got pounds, probably.

Kelsey Ledezma (04:43):

Maybe a pound, a pound I think.

Kendra Stocking (04:46):

We didn’t even know where to put it, like there was nowhere left to put it. We just had jars, big mason jars full of weed.

Kelsey Ledezma (04:56):

I actually had a friend who was diagnosed with breast cancer at 26. So a lot of our weed went to coconut oils and butters and different things for her to have to manage things that she was going through.

Kendra Stocking (05:09):

It’s worth, it’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of time, but it was worth it. We got a ton out of it. It was cool. I’m like sitting around with a pound of weed in your house.

Ellen Lee Scanlon (05:25):

Sandra Guynes also grows weed at home. She has a tip for beginners.

Sandra Guynes (05:30):

My biggest growing tip is kill some plants. And I know that sounds crazy but when people start to grow, they’re just so afraid it’s going to die. Sometimes you have to kill a few things for something to grow because you have to learn what this plant is communicating to you. In the beginning, we kept notes. We had a whiteboard and we wrote our watering cycle, our feeding cycle and our light cycles, all that stuff on there. Indoor growing, if possible, is way easier, just want to say that. You don’t have to control for the elements. You don’t have to worry about how much sunlight you have or where you put your plants. It can be more cost prohibitive at times because you have to buy a light and other things. We tend to be very DIY and low maintenance growers here. We still have to purchase a few things to get started, but I think indoor is honestly so much easier to manage.

Ellen Lee Scanlon (06:23):

Sandra also loves that growing her own, means she has lots of weed to share. You can share

Sandra Guynes (06:27):

You can share with whoever you want, sharing is caring or make your own preparations and things. I like to make a lot of things. So I make CBD oil. I make THC oils. I make cooking oils. I make gummies, I make butter. I make all kinds of things. And I share all of my bounty. It’s also been great because when you are growing and you’re making your own preparations, you have a little bit more control as to how much you want to consume. You know, here in California, you can probably trade with somebody. There’s plenty of places and people that grow and trade. We have four women right now that are growing. So there’s always a robust movement of things here and there and sharing and making, like that part in itself is therapeutic. Just being around people and cooking with cannabis is pretty cool.

Ellen Lee Scanlon (07:23):

If cooking with cannabis sounds like fun, check out episodes 69 and 71 of How to Do the Pot for chef’s tips for making easy edibles at home. I do want to caution that growing your own cannabis is definitely time consuming and can be a challenge. The next few episodes are going to help you make some important decisions like, do you want to grow your plants indoors or outdoors? Whether to grow from seed, a plant clone or an auto flower plant? And don’t worry, I’ll explain what all those things mean and ensuring you have the space and the privacy that you need. One of the books that has helped me learn about growing weed is called Grow Your Own. Nichole Graf is one of its co-authors. And she’s also the co-owner of Raven, an organic cannabis farm in Washington state. She has some sage advice about cultivating the right mindset for this project.

Nichole Graf (08:14):

I think making sure that this is a project that you actually want to be present for and invested in and you’re going to get excited to pay attention to your plans, to learn about what the pest infestation looks like, to learn about what a nutrient deficiency looks like. Or maybe too much water, too little water. I think often, I don’t know if it’s generational, if it’s cultural, but I hear people talking about their chosen responsibilities, especially, or projects they’re undertaking with this resentment. Like, “Oh, yeah, there’s something wrong with my plant, but I just don’t even have time to think about it. It’ll be fine.” Maybe don’t have a garden this year if it’s not something you want to actually doing and invested in, asking questions about and being curious about, “Ooh, my plant has something wrong with it. I’m going to learn something. I don’t know what it is. It’s not any of the things I’ve dealt with before.”

Nichole Graf (09:05):

So being excited about finding a solution means you’re actually going to take the time to find a solution before it gets too late, before it becomes this, again, another nagging thing in the back of your head that is an anxiety source, rather than a source of excitement that you get to learn a bunch of things about. And I think the stress reduction technique is reframing things that bring us anxiety as things that can be exciting. Really treating your garden with a sense of excitement and a sense of wonder and a sense of possibility and learning, versus this thing to be scared about.

Nichole Graf (09:39):

I hate all of these memes that I’m seeing right now, for some reason, this is the year about being snarky about gardening. And it’ll be a picture of a tomato and be like, “Spent $175 building out my garden.” “Spent six weeks of my life telling the soil,” and blah, blah, blah. At the end of the day, saved 35 cents on one heirloom tomato. And I’m like, that’s not how gardening or, A, that’s not the point of gardening. B, that’s not true. And if that’s how you’re viewing it and that’s what you’re putting into it, maybe gardening ain’t for you. Maybe that’s not your hobby of choice and that’s fine.

Ellen Lee Scanlon (10:16):

As a writer of a book about growing and the owner of a cannabis business, why does Nicole want to share all her hard earned knowledge about the plant?

Nichole Graf (10:24):

A lot of people ask us, like, “Why are you encouraging people to grow at home when you own a cannabis business? You should be encouraging people to buy your weed.” And it’s like, I want people to understand what it takes to grow good cannabis. And if they can do that on their own and feel comfortable doing it and it brings them joy, go for it and do it. A lot of people, it’ll be fun for a couple of seasons or there’ll be able to grow one strain. But at the end of the day, they want someone else to do it for them because it’s kind of a lot of work and it’s kind of picky and it does take up time and space in your life. And if it’s not something that you really love doing, you don’t have to do it. No one’s forcing you to do it. Support people who are doing it and are doing it in a way that you believe in, now that you understand how it’s done.

Ellen Lee Scanlon (11:08):

I recently finished a book called Steal Like an Artist, by Austin Kleon. And it had a quote that I loved. It said, “Share your dots, but you don’t have to connect them.” That’s really what we’re trying to do with these growing weed episodes. Whether you make these connections is up to you, I just want to share all the dots. Hopefully you’ve learned a few things and gotten excited to think more about growing your own weed at home and stay tuned. We have so much more to share with you. Thank you for listening to How to Do the Pot. For lots more information in past episodes, visit dothepot.com. Thanks to Madi Fair, our brand manager and our producer, Nick Patri. I’m Ellen Scanlon and we’ll be back soon with more of How to Do the Pot.