Growing cannabis 101: Business offers classes on how to cultivate homegrown pot

Business teaching how to grow your own cannabis A new Regina business is teaching people how to grow their own cannabis. Brendan Ellis reports.

A Regina man has turned the cultivation of personal cannabis into a business, offering classes to people who wish to learn how to grow it at home.

Jeremy Drummond, the co-owner of The Grow Room, opened his shop on Oct. 17, the same day that the recreational use of marijuana was legalized in Canada.

“This has always been sort of underground, and now that it is out in the open, we feel that it needs to be supported in a safe way,” Drummond told CTV Saskatchewan. “Doing that with educational classes is a really great place to start.”

Under the Cannabis Act, adults are permitted to grow up to four cannabis plants per household, though they are not allowed to sell any of what they grow to others. Some provinces and territories have placed additional restrictions on personal cultivation.

The Grow Room’s courses do not just provide step-by-step instruction on how to grow cannabis at home. They also detail how the legal landscape around cannabis has changed and explain the life cycle of the marijuana plant.

“I think a lot of people were very interested before, but nobody wants to be a criminal,” said Chad Bonin, the company’s master grower who has been growing medicinal marijuana for 24 years.

Business has been slow since the shop opened about a month ago because there is not yet a legal supply of cannabis seeds in Saskatchewan, but Drummond is optimistic that it will pick up once the situation is remedied.

“We’ve got a list and a lot of interest, so once the supply catches up with the market, I think we will be in a pretty good spot,” he said.

With a report from CTV Saskatchewan’s Brendan Ellis