I see why people would want to say: I grew X, where X is inorganic, or grew is metaphorical. There are a group of causative verbs in Enghlish (e.g., break, melt, cook, grow, fall) that allow for sentences were the agent is left out. Kind of similar to the passive construction, but without affixing / changing of the verb form. For example:
The ice melted.
The sun melted the ice.
The window broke.
The boy broke the window.
And I would say that people who use grow in this way are just trying to use grow the way others do with organic things.
The zucchini grew.
Gianni grew the zucchini.
And so:
The company grew.
John grew the company.
Of course, it's not just organic things, because something sounds slightly funny about:
The goat grew.
Mary grew the goat.
So maybe for some people 'to grow' is tightly bound to growing plants rather than animals. Although while googling about the web I did find an interesting turn of phrase: an article entitled "How the Garden Grew the Gardener."
