I am lucky enough to live in the state of Oregon, which has legalized marijuana for recreational use. I can grow up to four plants. Last year I grew three lovely ladies in my backyard and it was overkill, I still have a bunch of all three strains (Blue Widow, Strawberry Cough and Pit Boss).
This year I am just growing two, I purchased a Blue City Diesel clone and a Girl Scout Cookies clone at a local marijuana shop and have been hardening them to the outdoors gradually over the last few weeks. Our nights are finally warm enough that I felt good about putting them in the ground.
Blue City Diesel on the left; Girl Scout Cookies on the right
Last year, believe it or not, I grew all three plants out of the small ~ 3' x 4' raised bed you see the plants sitting on top of in the picture above. I trained them heavily so that they grew out in different directions, but it was of course far from ideal in terms of how crowded they were.
Mold/bud rot is always in issue for denser buds and late finishing varieties during our wet fall weather and I had to pull down the (very large/dense bud formation) Blue Widow and (sativa dominant / late finishing) Strawberry Cough plants before they had a chance to fully mature. Being crowded with poor air circulation didn't help with the mold, although even plants with all the room in the world will rot here when the weather turns.
This year I made a second raised bed, trimming the small camellia bush to the right back a bit, and I picked varieties that are on the Indica / early finishing side of things.
I dug down about 2' below the new raised bed and mixed in some soil amendments, then filled the raised bed portion with good organic potting soil mixed locally at a grow shop. The ladies are happy with their new homes and showed no signs of stress at all throughout the day after the transplant.
This is still closer together than ideal to have two plants outdoors, but with the layout of my yard this is the only spot they can go and not be visible from the back alley to anyone peering through my fence. In this spot, my garage blocks them from view. This is actually both a legal requirement of growing here (plants need to be out of sight of neighbors / passerby's ) and also a common sense precaution to avoid having your plants ripped off.
My next door neighbors actually had 4 plants stolen from their yard right before harvest time last fall; in their case it was obvious they were growing as they had put up a grow tent over them to keep them dry that was easily visible from the alley, and there was nothing blocking line of site to the plants from anyone who looked through the cracks in the fence.
I am looking forward to these ladies stretching out their roots and raising their beautiful branches to the sky. I will of course keep y'all updated, one of my favorite things to do is take pictures of insects on marijuana so expect a lot of that :)
Much love - Carl