People have been growing their own marijuana for years, because it was illegal to buy it. Now retail marijuana sales are legal in many states, and some growers have abandoned their gardens and are buying legal marijuana products.

Well, I’ve sampled the best dispensary buds, edibles, tinctures, beverages and concentrates, and I’m here to tell you  I’ve grown my own marijuana for many years, and marijuana legalization won’t change that.

I grow marijuana that’s better than anything you can buy anywhere, and you can too!

I went to the top legal cannabis dispensaries in Colorado, Oregon, California and several other states and sampled their top-shelf buds. I was glad to discover my homegrown buds are stronger, tastier, more potent.

That’s because I’ve invested in rare marijuana cuttings and landrace marijuana seeds, grow “craft” marijuana, and consume it at maximum freshness.

I’m not a marijuana strains breeding genius, but I know enough to make crosses, choose phenotypes, and backcross to make marijuana varieties nobody else has.

The fact that I’ve made my own strains isn’t the main benefit of breeding—it’s that I’ve made strains that give me exactly the kind of high and medicinal effects I want.

You can buy legal marijuana from dispensaries with the biggest menus, and still NOT get the marijuana effects you need and crave. Only by craft-growing your own cannabis flowers do you get the exact effects you desire.

Growing My Own Marijuana Ensures Health & Safety

No matter what testing and regulatory scheme a legalized cannabis state or country has, you can never be sure if cannabis buds or processed cannabis products like gummies are 100% safe. The cannabis industry is full of greedy liars, and we all know government regulators often fail to do their jobs diligently.

Most gummies and other cannabis edibles/beverages contain bizarre forms of THC derived from hemp. This is not a safe process for sourcing THC, as you can read here.

According to a professional research article from 2022, orally ingested cannabis available legally retail can be very bad for people, especially if they’re elderly, or already facing health challenges.

It’s not just oral cannabis products. Many of the buds sold retail at licensed dispensaries are polluted. Read the lengthy excerpt at the end of this article, about poisoners in the commercial cannabis growing industry, and you’ll never buy a retail marijuana product from a business again.

It’s staggering how much garbage ends up on and in commercial marijuana plants and processed cannabis products.

I’ve examined dispensary buds and concentrates using magnification, and seen pet hairs, ashes, human hairs, insect bodies, dirt, mold spores, powdery mildew, and other contaminants.

I can immediately detect by taste and smell when dispensary weed is moldy, mildewed, improperly dried and cured, and when concentrates retain residue of hexane, alcohol, butane, and other solvents used to extract cannabinoids and terpenoids from whole bud.

Thing is, most consumers are not cannabis experts. They don’t detect the problems, and often fail to realize that ill health symptoms may be caused by cannabis products they’re using.

Worse yet, most marijuana-specific fertilizer brands transfer heavy metals and and other junk directly into your crops. And many unscrupulous growers use harmful pesticides, toxic bud boosters, fungicides, and mildewcides on their plants during flowering; these harmful substances are often present in plant tissue at harvest.

Only by producing them yourself using the cleanest, safest grow room procedures, nutrients, processing, and materials, that’s how.

Marijuana Effects You Love

Getting what you want from cannabis goes beyond breeding your own proprietary marijuana seeds and strains. Another thing you can do to customize the high is by choosing when to harvest. Cannabis flowers are amazing factories that produce cannabinoids and terpenoids. The percentages and ratios of these compounds change constantly throughout the plants’ flowering phase.

Instead of looking at the seed catalogue, seeing that the strain is listed as ready for harvest after 56 days in bloom phase, and harvesting at 56 days, you can harvest earlier and/or later than that, sampling the buds to see which high suits you best.

This tactic helped me when I grow highly-sedating Kush and Indica strains for customers. I personally dislike that heavy, sedating high so I harvest buds for myself about two weeks early, and get a more stimulating high, while allowing most of the buds to continue ripening to create the knockout Kush and Indica punch my customers crave.

This works in the other direction too. I’ve grown Sativa strains, sampled them at the recommended harvest time, and found them so stimulating that they made me anxious, paranoid, or sleepless. By allowing these zingy Sativa buds to ripen past ideal harvest time, some of the THC degrades to CBN, and more CBD develops, creating a less-jarring, more chill high.

Growing Marijuana Makes You Feel Great!

It’s in our deepest DNA to nurture an organism small and helpless, and with our care, love and effort, to see it grow into fruitful maturity. Nurturing cannabis plants can seem sometimes almost as fulfilling as when you “grow” a child or love a pet.

Growing marijuana requires a special kind of human-plant relationship, because marijuana plants can’t easily tell you when they’re happy or sad.  But you learn to read them, to understand when the environment, light and food you give them is optimized.

Why grow? Because you create lush, green cannabis plants oozing with the freshest, strongest, sweetest cannabinoid and terpenoids resins that make you feel good in a way nothing else can.

Growing & Selling Marijuana Gives You Freedom

If you’re primarily a medical user, you can grow medicinal strains that are far better and safer for reducing pain, anxiety, depression and other problems than any pharmaceutical you could use.

Another reason to grow your own: growing cannabis from seeds preserves cannabis genetic diversity so cannabis won’t become monopolized by Big Ag and other corporate vultures, as has happened with corn, soybeans, wheat, and other crops.

Cannabis growing is an art and science, and the end result is cannabis you need and love. If you’re a marijuana grower right now, keep on growing. If you haven’t started growing cannabis, start growing unless it’s unsafe to do so.

The pride, fun and cost savings of growing your own instead of buying cannabis are well worth it. One big mistake you want to avoid is using bad marijuana seeds and bad growing advice, which are pervasive.

The harsh fact is that people buying whole flower and/or processed marijuana products from dispensaries are likely getting ripped off and their health is being harmed. The industry is corrupt. A typical example is a company that changed its name to avoid consumers finding out how fraudulent it is.

The company used to be called CannaVEST, now calls itself CV Sciences. Its greedy former CEO, and/or the company itself have been subject to numerous consumer and regulatory complaints. In 2017, the SEC filed a civil action against CannaVEST Corp. (now CV Sciences) and former CEO Michael J. Mona, Jr., alleging fraud, deceptive practices with auditors, and false financial reports. In 2018, another civil action commenced, alleging that CV Sciences flat-out lied when labeling a tobacco cessation products as “patent-pending” when its patents had been denied.

The company had to pay nearly a million dollars to settle this case. In 2022, the company again was tagged for fraud. In 2020, CV Sciences was accused by state regulators of unlawfully marketing hemp THC and CBD products as FDA-approved dietary supplements in breach of state and federal consumer laws.

Here’s yet another report showing the corruption in the regulated legal cannabis industry:

California cannabis regulators recalled cannabis they believe was contaminated with pesticides after a licensed cultivation worker — Yufang Lan — died. Information obtained by MJBizDaily via a public records request, indicate state law enforcement officials believe Lan died after an “occupational pesticide exposure” at the Joel Michaely Farms in Lake County.

The California Dept. of Cannabis Control (DCC) shut down the farm and recalled four different products after determining they were produced under unsanitary conditions.

In addition, the methods, facilities and controls used to cultivate the cannabis did not conform with pesticide statutes and regulations.

Here’s a list of the specific cannabis products  recalled:

* Iced infused flower, produced by Natura Distribution and sold at 20 retailers in the state

* Tree House Flower, produced by Peace and Joy and sold at Dr. Greenthumb, Tree House, Fig Trees and Peace and Love marijuana stores in Los Angeles

* Martini’s Pre-Roll, produced by the same manufacturer and sold at the same stores

* Cali Lean Tincture, produced by 510 Consultants and sold at 25 retailers throughout the state.

* California’s (DCC ) confirmed that the Iced and Martini’s recalls are related to Joel Michaely Farms. A spokesperson for the agency did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation about the other recalls.

California suspended the Lake County cultivator’s permit on Sept. 8 after discovering several violations of state law including:

* Untagged cannabis plants

* Unaccounted-for inventory

* Failure to record activity in state-mandated track-and-trace systems

* Failure to comply with environmental protection and pesticide laws

* Growing “adulterated” cannabis

Under California state law, conditions that render cannabis “adulterated” include contamination with a banned or poisonous substance and more recalls seem likely. Lake County planning records indicate that Joel Michaely Farms was approved to cultivate nearly 1 million square feet of canopy.

While executing a search warrant at the grow in August, law enforcement discovered:

* 55,069 cannabis plants

* 6,000 pounds of processed cannabis

* Illegal chemicals

* Approximately 20,000 gallons of contaminated liquid requiring specialized disposal.

All the cannabis was destroyed, according to officials.

The bottom line is, if you want safe whole flower, concentrates, or edible marijuana, grow your own buds. If you can’t do that, find an ethical black-market organic marijuana grower. You can’t trust retail dispensaries or state regulators to protect you.