Now is the time to grow your own cannabis.

As pot legalization takes over both the United States (piecemeal) and our neighbors to the north (wholesale), there has never been a better time to legally cultivate your own cannabis. Just ask Nikki Lastreto and Swami Chaitanya — each cannabis royalty in their own right — who run a sun-grown organic cannabis operation in California called Swami Select.

“A lot of times with farmers, they’ll grow smaller batches that are often more potent,” Chaitanya says. “They’re giving so much energy and love to those few plants.”

Here are some fast tips to get you up and growing — then lying back and smoking — some fine outdoor cannabis.

1. A Pot for Your Pot
Organic potting soil is best, though Miracle-Gro works, too. If you plan to grow it in a pot, consider getting a Smart Pot, which is made of fabric and will foster bigger, healthier plants.

Chaitanya recommends the tan-colored ones, which won’t heat up the roots.

2. Pick Your Plant
When choosing your plant, research whether it’s high in CBD or THC. CBD produces the body high, THC is more of a head high — perfect for chilling out with headphones and listening to music.

3. Seed or Clone?
Clones are little plants selected by dispensaries to produce top-quality medicine — with the proper care, of course.

“You never know what you’re going to get with a seed,” Lastreto says. “It’s riskier, but much more exciting, because it’s like having two kids. You don’t know if one’s going to be blonde or brunette.”

4. Heat Check
The best temperature range for growing is between 70 and 85 degrees. When your plant starts to flower, a little cooler (65 to 85 degrees) is perfectly okay.

5. Let There Be Light
About eight to ten hours of light is ideal. More is better.

6. Soil Matters
“When you’re growing cannabis, it’s all in the soil,” says Joshua Mezher, cofounder of marijuana home-grow kit company A Pot for Pot. “That’s the main special source of our kit, specifically formulated to work with cannabis. We put 17 ingredients and a lot of experience into creating a soil environment that allows marijuana to thrive.”

7. Ripe for Picking
Cannabis is usually ready for harvest about 60 days after it starts flowering. So, if it starts to flower the first week of August, it should be harvest-ready the first week of October.

8. Cure Your Medicine
“You will get the best potency and the best aroma from the terpenes if you cut the plants down before first light, at five or six in the morning,” Lastreto says. “Then hang them upside down, and after about two weeks they’ll be dry. Then put them away in a paper bag.”

9. Chop It Up
When you cut into the stem and it snaps, the pot is dry and ready to trim.

“As farmers for our own personal best, we don’t necessarily trim it all,” Chaitanya says. “We trim as we go. And that might be what you’re doing if it’s your personal stash. You’ll need trimming scissors, which you can get at the grocery store. You don’t want to smoke a lot of the exterior leaf, because that has a lot of chlorophyll, which will hurt your throat. But don’t throw away those really good tiny leaves. Instead, warm them in the oven with some butter or olive oil, and you’ll get an infused oil very easily.”

After that, it’s all kicking back and enjoying the fruits (and flowers) of your labor.