Where I'm from; very north continental u.s. the beginning seems right to being in mid spring (may 15 - 20 ). Proceed to my grow where it is tucked nicely away in weeden. A lot of amish folk live around my town (population 5,000) and have lumber mills and what have you so I go to the local Amish lumber yards and grab scrape maple ply scrap about one - two feet high 4 foot long and about one inch thick. I manufacture my own raised bed with these boards. After making these boxes leave the bottom s open, and make sure you take all of the sod out of the ground underneath the box perfectly so the box can kind of sit in the ground maybe 1 or 2 inches nice and snug. Now proceed to put about 15 feet diameter of small hole chicken wire around the grow circle with the raised bed perfectly in the middle. This will keep away all kinds of small animal pests that will eat your beautiful ganj goddesses. Its kind of funny that animals enjoy a plant that is illegal in the u.s., but back on track. Fill your raised bed with any good mixture of soil mixes. sometimes I use barn scrappings and 2 or 3 year old manure that has turned into pure black dirt basically. use pete moss earthworm castings and guano properly according to dose based on how much dirt you have. Now most people I know that grow don't do this but I do, that is to start your plants right after new years inside and get them about 4 foot tall and sexed (if mommas, clones no worrry) I take them from inside and bring them out around may 15 - 20 and transplant them into my raised beds. Throughout the year I make special trips once a weekend to feed my ganja goddesses a well dose cocktail of P and K and sugars to help ripen all those swolen glands she will acheive not too long down the road. Throughout the year make sure you pay attention to drought and rain forecasts, don't worry too much if there is a small drought if there is a mediocre to severe drought obviously worry, but since all the sod was removed and your raised bed is actually connected well into the earths very own the roots will grow deep. especially of when you transplant your goddesses make sure to dig halfway to the wholeway to the earth.. put your goddesses in and fill them right back up so the roots are already there. Now this has worked great for me and a few older guys that taught me how to boogie it. If anyone has any input or wants to ask me any questions about this please don't hesitate because ya never just know what could happen.
Peace
sorry I pinched the skunk and forgot to explain the rest this is the edit to finish what i began.
Through the beginning of spring and through the summer ledge your plants which means bend them over and tie them down so they run parrallel with the ground. as the later months and budding starts to occur this is going to be reversed, the buds will get heavey and the plants will want to fall and lay on the ground. You can't let this happen, if you are in the woods find some branches that have a nice crutch in them and stick them in the ground every foot or so until your whole plant is resting nicely in the middle of all those v's and never touches the ground that will consume it. As your plant grows normal branches that would be smaller buds on the bottom of your plant if you grew it normal will actually turn into huge giant headies, just as big as a normal headie, but the difference is now since you have done this with the plant you have multiplied the main headie count by however long and how many branches your goddess has. now I dare someone to try this as soon as possible because once you see what happens you will never forget why you started growing in the first place. Thanks and excuse my broken story for I got blazed and went into a daze and forgot what i stated for a bout a day and about a day later I remembered I had to complete this. Peace