Grow Your Own: The South African Home Grower's Course
An evidence-led course for adults growing a small amount of cannabis at home for personal use in South Africa: the law first, then genetics, environment, nutrition, training, pests, harvest, drying and curing.
Adults 18 and over only. This course covers growing for personal use in South Africa. It is a sourced summary of the law, not legal advice, and it does not cover selling — there is no lawful way to do so.
Reading-based course · about 15 hours 34 minutes
Adults (18 and over) growing cannabis at home for their own use in South Africa
Plantlady223 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
Legal and health notice · adults 18+
This course is general information about growing cannabis at home for your own use in South Africa. It is not legal, medical or financial advice, and Future Farms is not a law firm or a medical practice. The law on private cannabis use in South Africa is unsettled and can change at any time, and some points in the course have not been confirmed by any court or official source. Before you buy seed, start a grow or rely on anything in this course, get advice from an admitted South African attorney about your own circumstances, and speak to a doctor about any health concern. You are responsible for making sure that what you do is lawful. Selling, buying or supplying cannabis remains a criminal offence. Future Farms accepts no liability for any loss, prosecution, injury or other consequence arising from use of this course.
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Become a Future Farms Certified Hydroponics Grower
Work through every lesson in a course and download your personalised Future Farms certificate straight away — no waiting, no emails. Print it, frame it, or attach it to a job or funding application as proof of your hydroponics training.
Course outline
1. Before you plant anything: the law8 lessons
- How to use this course
- What Prince actually decided, and what it did not
- The Cannabis for Private Purposes Act: signed, not in force
- How many plants, how much cannabis? The honest answer
- What stays criminal: dealing, clubs and why a home grow cannot be monetised
- Seeds and clones: the unresolved gap
- Private means private: flats, leases and body corporates
- Driving, work, children and the rest of the household
2. The plant6 lessons
3. Planning your grow6 lessons
4. Setting up the tent8 lessons
- The tent, and where to put it
- Light: PPFD, DLI and choosing a lamp
- Hanging height, coverage and measuring what you actually have
- Air: extraction, intake and circulation
- Odour control that works
- Temperature, humidity and VPD
- Power: running cost, timers and surviving an outage
- Commissioning: the checks before a plant goes in
5. Outdoors and under cover in South Africa6 lessons
6. Medium and nutrition8 lessons
7. From seed to established plant7 lessons
8. Vegetative growth and training6 lessons
9. Flowering6 lessons
10. Problems9 lessons
- Prevention first: quarantine, hygiene and environment
- Spider mites, russet mites and broad mites
- Thrips, aphids, whitefly and fungus gnats
- Caterpillars, and the outdoor pest picture
- Powdery mildew and bud rot
- Root problems
- What you may safely and legally use on a crop you will smoke
- Diagnosing deficiencies: a symptom key
- When to cull a plant
11. Harvest, dry and cure7 lessons
12. Using it responsibly8 lessons
- Potency and dose: why home-grown is an unknown
- Decarboxylation and edibles: the dosing problem
- Non-solvent concentrates, and why solvent extraction is out of scope
- The health evidence, honestly
- Driving, work and daily use
- Children, pets and storage
- Getting your flower tested in South Africa
- If you want to cut down or stop
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