Songfacts®:

• This short acoustic track is a double entendre; Young's biographer Johnny Rogan described it tactfully as a tribute to "rural farmers and those members of Young's audience who prefer to cultivate their own weed." >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England
• "Homegrown" is about marijuana. Young makes little attempt to beat around the bush about this (pun intended).
  
  Homegrown is a good thing
  Plant that bell and let it ring
  
  Since at least the 1960s, "home grown" is common parlance for weed that a person grows and harvests at home (or on land they own).
• The song is the title track of an album Young recorded in 1974 and 1975 in the midst of parting ways with Carrie Snodgress, the mother of his first child. Young later likened the experience to making a record in the middle of war-time Vietnam. It was so painful that he didn't release the album until 2020, nearly 50 years after recording it.
  
  Along with "We Don't Smoke it No More," "Homegrown" is one of two songs on the album that have nothing to do with Young's breakup with actress Snodgress; both songs unambiguously deal with marijuana. Nearly every song on the album is marked by Young's feelings of love, loss, and pain regarding Snodgress. "Homegrown" and "We Don't Smoke it No More" are the exceptions.
• Young recorded another version of the song in November 1975 that he released as the last track on the 1977 album American Stars 'n Bars. This version was recorded with Crazy Horse and is much more aggressive than the original Homegrown version. At 2:20, it's the shortest song on the album.
• American Stars 'N Bars was released in favor of the shelved and more musically eclectic Chrome Dreams. While the record never saw release, Neil eventually put out a spiritual successor to it, 2007's Chrome Dreams II.