First I need to tell that I grew it illegally here at Brazil. So we can't import automated seeds because thats like inviting the FBI to your home (we just want peace and weed).
All right. Here at my home we have some fruits and a fertil black soil, which is known for having more organic matter, we have trees of lemon, acerola and lychee, besides many normal plants, this helped some how.
At the beginning I did what you guys call a kitchen garden. I dug the soil around 40cm x 3m of space, and 20cm to 30cm of depth. It took me many days doing that for some hours, its better when its rainning and using a hoe, but lot of hard work. After that I was making piles of soil, we do that because we want to sift this soil, so we take out all stones and grass roots from it, we want pure soil, you can use a pushcart to help, buckets and a construction shovel. After that I just put it back at the same place. That permits fruits trees and vegetables to grow easily, more space to expand their roots, we also don't want a compact soil, so they can also breath better. I did this around the lemon tree when it was still very small, so I had to be carefull to not cut its roots with the hoe. I didn't use it to grow more stuff, but the soil now is very usefull. We can use some divisories to avoid grass to invade the place back, also, its not the best location to do it around a wall because ants love that... I also made coconut fiber, but thats very hard to do and takes lot of time, you can buy it cheap anywhere, they help the soil to retain water and creates more space, so you don't need to irrigate everytime, it is mixed together now.
All right, after that I decided to grow the weed plants in vases, it's better for changing locations, which is very needed for many, many reasons, like too hot sun (tropical country), too much rain, plants very used to some especific treatment can get stressed very easily if taken out of this routine. Also transport in vases is usefull due to suddenly visits (you might have already deduced this is not a normal practice).
Also, I growed only two plants, because if anything went wrong some how, laws here interprets that as only for personal use with this ammount, not traffic (nothing makes no sense).
Ok, I decided to do what is called here vegetable earth, which is to increase the ammount of organic matter needed, like fertilizing it (you can also buy that, but it's easy to do).
Here we will talk about chemistry. For agriculture we need:
Nitrogen - that helps in the vegetative stage, the growth stage. That helps exactly on that, this is acid, so not too much. We can use the coffee grounds that contains it.
Potassium - Which helps in the production of carbos and proteins during photosynthesis, helps in creates resistence for thermal amplitudes. You can also do a liquid fertilizer from that. I prefer to use potato peel, they already have vegetable defense to not attract insects.
Calcium - This is a balancer, we want a neutral ph, not too acid, not too alkali. Others substances are more acid, so this helps to control and make an equilibrium. We can find it on eggs shells, clean it and crush in the blender. But there are many others substracts that acts as balancers, like calcareous, perlite, vermiculite...
Carbon - This already exists on soil and atmosphere, plants uses it as food during photosynthesis process together with water and the sun rays for growth, using their leafs and roots receptors, where they also liberates O² at the end, purifying the air (the inversion of combustion process, huh?! Nature is awsome).
Phosphor - It helps on floration, you can add it one month before this stage. We can find it on pumpkin seeds or ashes, weird, but yes. Clean the seeds and mix in the blender.
There are also substracts for germination, or stuff similar to coconut fiber, like spagnhum truffle. And many others that I don't know.
So, we mix all that together with the pure soil that I told how to do before and left there for 3 months so everthing will decompose, I used fruits bags that I had here, they have small holes (almost invisibles), they are great for that because the syrup will get drained, and at the same time it avoids insects to get in, but people also use earthworms to help to decompose. Ok, after this time you have great soil with organic matter.
Now you only need to germinate your "prensolto seeds" (how we call the trafficked weed here), where you put the seeds in a pot with wet paper in a dark place, changing daily air, and after roots starts to get out is now ready to begin the VEGETATIVE cycle.
Here your plants need to have from 7 to 12 hours a day of solar energy, its better if you get 7hrs of direct exposition and some more hours of indirect contact, they have a sensor to know if its day or night anyway, this is a thermometer for their cycles. If you leave them in direct contact all day, they can get stressed, they will need saving flushs to recuperate, that's not nice. Sometimes I had to take them out of intense sunny days and leave in a covered open area. Growers also do low stress training on them during vegetative, I didn't.
I used top pruning twice, you should research this subject matter.
Some of their leafs got burned because I was using neem oil, thats an organic substract to avoid insects, but you should sprinkle very few after the sun fades out.
About vases, I decided to go along with thoses all cultivation after first transplant, you should search for it, because those are very delicated steps, but I could have transplanted to a bigger vase and they would retain water better, I would need to irrigate less, and their roots would have more space.
You should also irrigate them from every 2 or 3 days, the soil will form channels through where water will drain and roots grow. Keep in mind this is not like any other plants, because they will get used to special treatment, so if you stop doing that frequently they can easily get stressed, this is not good because they can hermafroditate, even female plants, and use their capacity to produce thc during floration for generate seeds, this almost happened to me, this is not nice, thankfully their capacity went to thc production.
Since the beginning, you'll notice the cannabis aroma in the air, which is the best part.
After all that will come the time for floration, people can rig that by inducing less light hours and more dark hours, that tells their sense it's natural season for floration, I leaved it go naturally. Their buds will start to grow together with white trichomas, so its variates from taste to taste whats the time for harvest of buds, if you want to try to replicate the plant and etc... I decided to harvest it all due to lots of reasons to not be able in keep doing that for a long time. So, about trichomes, when they are red, people say it gives more sativa euphoric effects, while when they turn brown it will give more indian relaxing effects, but that will depend a lot from their genes, there are lots of variations... We know the good common effects anyway (I took it brown).
Here is a phase where you need to flush them, to clean the more substracts substances used as possible, after this you will need to cut twigs for put them to dry in a dark place, with very few ventilation. I used a closet.
After two weeks and twigs cracks easily, they are ready for trimming, which means to enroll the buds, and after it put them to cure, where it gives more flavor to the weed, and liberates toxines out, like a wine. You put them in a pot with 2/3 of weed and 1/3 of air. Its said that the more time you leave there, the better, but try to wait at least 2 months or Idk...
It takes lots of time, go prepared. And goes faster than you think. Good luck there!!