KEY POINTS:
A full-time mother charged with cannabis offences was growing the prohibited plants for "some quick cash", Tauranga District Court was told today.
Terrele Patricia Fleming, 35, was bailed until March 27 for sentencing when she pleaded guilty to possessing and cultivating cannabis and having utensils for using the drug.
Judge Christopher Harding ordered a home detention report.
Prosecutor Sergeant Mark Graham said police executed a search warrant on Fleming's Mt Maunganui home on the afternoon of November 26 last year.
On a bedroom floor officers found a small container with about one gram of ground cannabis plant and a tall metal tin holding a bong for smoking the drug.
The defendant admitted being the owner and said she had ground some of the plant in her coffee grinder and mixed it with tobacco for her personal use.
Police also discovered a piece of fabric enclosing a glass pipe Fleming confessed she used to smoke methamphetamine.
With it in her handbag was some tinfoil containing cannabis oil, which she said had been given to her, Mr Graham said.
In a caravan parked on the property, with a power cord running to it from the house, 36 cannabis plants were growing in individual 20 litre buckets.
They were about 60m tall, healthy, "meticulously cared for" and developing buds, the court was told.
Fleming said she was growing them to earn some "quick cash".
Police also found two large horticultural lamps in a garden shed which she admitted used to be set up in a bedroom in her house.
A tent had been equipped with the lights above the three dozen cannabis plants until three days earlier, when she had a house inspection.
Mr Graham said Fleming had not previously appeared in court.
- NZPA
