Short answer: six plants per residence
If you are 21 or older, California lets you grow up to six cannabis plants at a private residence for personal use. Not six per adult. Six per residence, full stop. Two roommates, a married couple, a house with four adults who all consume: the cap still reads six. That number comes from Proposition 64, the 2016 ballot measure that legalized adult use, and it has not moved since.
Two conditions ride along. The plants have to stay out of public view, and an outdoor grow needs to be in a locked space. Nothing you harvest can be sold.
What state law actually says
Business and Professions Code sections 11362.1 and 11362.2 carry the weight here. The first one says adults 21 and over may possess, use, and cultivate cannabis at a private residence within set limits. The second hands cities and counties the power to regulate personal cultivation, with two guardrails: they cannot ban indoor cultivation of up to six plants inside a private residence, and they can only prohibit outdoor growing if a local ordinance says so.
Medical Cannabis Plant Limit vs Recreational: Which Gives You More Plants?
Read that again, because it is where most people get surprised. An indoor tent in your spare room is close to untouchable by city hall. A sunny backyard grow is not.
Where your city changes the math
- Some jurisdictions allow six plants indoors and outdoors, with screening and lock requirements.
- Others allow six indoors only, no outdoor cultivation at all.
- A handful push hard against outdoor grows, requiring locked greenhouses, permits, or both.
- Landlords can ban cultivation in a lease. State law does not override a rental agreement.
Before you buy soil, check your city's municipal code or call the planning department. Fifteen minutes on the phone beats tearing down a grow in August.
Medical patients are a different category
If you hold a valid physician's recommendation under the older medical framework, the six plant ceiling is not the whole story. State law protects cultivation of an amount reasonably related to your medical needs, and local rules still apply. The practical takeaway: patients can often grow more than six, but as much as I want is not a legal standard worth banking on. Local plant counts, county limits, and the reasonable amount test all get a say.
What six plants actually produce
People fixate on the plant count and ignore the harvest. A healthy outdoor plant in good sun can yield several ounces to over a pound of dried flower. Indoors, under a decent light, a newer grower might pull two to four ounces per plant. Six plants means more than a pound in most cases, and you cannot legally sell a gram of it. That math pushes plenty of people toward a smaller grow, or none at all.
The convenience question
Here is the part of this niche nobody likes to admit. Growing is not hard, but it is relentless. Clones or seeds, a light schedule, pH swings, spider mites, bud rot in October, then weeks of curing in jars you have to burp. Meanwhile a dispensary is a ten minute drive, delivery shows up at your door in under an hour across most metro areas, and the menu has forty cultivars instead of one.
I look at it this way: home growing wins on cost per gram and on knowing exactly what went into the plant. Retail wins on time. For a lot of Californians, time is the scarce resource, and convenience has quietly become the deciding factor. Six plants is the legal ceiling, but for most households the real limit is how much attention they will give a living thing for four months.
If you do grow, stay at or under six, keep it locked and hidden, resist the urge to sell, and check your local rules first. That is the whole playbook.