Do You Need A Tent To Grow Indoors?


Grow tents are an excellent investment for anybody who enjoys growing plants at home and wishes to grow the plants indoors. Your desire to grow plants indoors might be for several reasons, but using a grow tent is a great way to improve the entire indoor gardening experience.

A grow tent is not needed to grow indoors but the added benefit of controlling the light, temperature and humidity will help you grow better fruit, vegetables and herbs. Having a separate space for growing will prevent any damage from mildew, pests and excess light from affecting the rest of your home and furnishings.

There are several benefits to having your indoor plants grow in a grow tent, and these benefits cannot be underestimated. Besides creating a controlled environment in which you determine the heat, humidity, moisture, and amount of light, the grow tent provides the opportunity to create an indoor garden that can easily grow throughout the year and does not require you to venture outdoors during winter to tend your plants.

Grow Tent Door
Grow Tent Door

Controlling Your Indoor Growing Environment

A grow tent allows you to have total control over the environment where you grow your plants. The growing environment can be adjusted to the needs of the plants through the use of air conditioning, humidity control, heat, and light. 

While a grow tent is not essential for growing plants indoors, it is an extremely beneficial investment that will assist you in growing any plant of your choice under the best possible conditions. Learn more about the cost of a grow tent in my article, Is A Grow Tent A Good Investment?

Growing plants indoors without a grow tent can be challenging due to the difficulties associated with controlling the environment and the light, heat, and humidity. Fruit and vegetable plants require a different environment than your home furnishings and trying to control your space for both can ruin your furniture, indoor garden or both.

A grow tent is essentially a fabric box lined with a reflective material. This material reflects both light and heat, equally distributing both to ensure the plant receives them in the right amounts. The grow tent is equipped with lights that encourage photosynthesis and a ventilation system that ensures the plants enjoy sufficient airflow and replenished CO2 levels.

Because of the above system, a grow tent allows you to grow almost any plant throughout the entire year. Naturally, this differs from growing plants outdoors because, in this context, you are completely at the mercy of the weather.

VIVOSUN 4' x 8' Grow Tent Kit Complete - VS4000 LED Grow Light with Samsung...
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Is A Grow Tent Worth It?

Many growers question whether a grow tent is worth the cost or not. A large grow tent can be purchased for under $200 and redirects stray light back onto your plants increasing efficiency and growth. It can be used to start seedlings earlier in the spring and sustain the growth of your outdoor plants over the winter saving time and money over time.

The added benefit of having closable doors on a grow tent reduces the excess light and noise of your watering and timer systems from becoming part of your indoor environment. Operating lights well into the evening or early in the morning won’t interrupt the natural light cycles of your indoor space.

Whether you are growing vegetables, fruit, or herbs, a grow tent helps create the ideal environment to cultivate your dream indoor garden. Any serious indoor gardener will agree that grow tents are excellent investments that will serve you well in the long term for all of your indoor gardening needs. 

Here are a couple of the best grow tents available for your indoor growing project.

Benefits Of Using A Grow Tent

Using a grow tent offers several benefits to your indoor plants. Grow tents are extremely energy efficient as they help amplify the rays of the grow light, ensuring less energy is used in helping the plants to photosynthesize.

Grow Tents Increase The Efficiency of Indoor Grow Lights

Grow tents feature a reflective nylon interior coating that allows the plants to receive light from every angle for the correct amount of time every single day. This gets more light below the upper canopy of your plants stimulating more growth and dispersing the light to shorter plants.

The light is evenly dispersed amongst all the plants in the tent, ensuring that the plants are permanently healthy and happy. The full spectrum LED grow lights reflect off the tent’s interior walls and boosts photosynthesis significantly. 

Get all the latest information in my updated article on using full spectrum LED grow lights for indoor gardening.

Creating a Perfect Growing Environment

A grow tent helps to create a controlled environment for growing your plants. Instead of relying on the unpredictable environment provided by mother nature, a grow tent allows you to control every aspect of the plants’ growing environment, including temperature, humidity, light, and water. 

The tents create a controlled environment where there is minimal water waste through evaporation. I use my Tower Garden vertical aeroponic growing system to maximize the growing area inside my grow tent. Find out more about how easy it is to grow indoors or outside in my recent article about growing fruit, herbs and vegetables with a Tower Garden

I can keep the conditions just right to grow tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers while still keeping the tent cool enough to prevent my greens and herbs from bolting and turning to seed.

Tower Garden Aeroponics System

Keeping a Comfortable Indoor Environment in Your Home

Odor control is another benefit associated with grow tents. This is extremely beneficial when using liquid fertilizers and other chemicals, as the tent will keep the odor from seeping out into the adjacent room, keeping it in the tent.

A good quality grow tent will also muffle sounds, offering excellent noise control. This means that a grow tent can be placed almost anywhere without disturbing the occupants of the spaces nearby.

Grow tents not only feature floodproof floors, but they create an airtight seal that will not allow any external temperature changes. A grow tent will also keep out any pests that would otherwise have been ravaging your plants.

Read my latest article on where to place a dehumidifier in a grow tent

Considerations When Choosing A Grow Tent

When choosing a grow tent, there are numerous considerations that have to be made in order to see if the tent is right for you and your circumstances. 

Grow Tent Sizing

Firstly, the size of your grow tent is important to consider. The size is applicable not only to the room in which the grow tent will be situated, but to the size and number of plants that will be contained within the tent.

There is also equipment that needs to go inside your grow tent like lights, fans, tools etc. The size of the tent will have to accommodate for this. Most grow tent manufacturers provide information on the number of plants a tent will comfortably fit.

Grow Tent Materials and Construction

The material that makes up the frame of the grow tent is important as this provides stability for the tent and adds reinforcement to the structure. A strong metal frame will help support the plants and any trellising as well as any hanging equipment inside the tent like lights and fans.

The quality of mylar lining the tent walls, quality of zippers and stitching and the thickness of the wall material all add to the longevity of your grow tent. 

Check out my latest article discussing the materials used in a grow tent and do they create a fire hazard.

Conclusion

While it is not essential to have a tent in order to grow plants indoors, investing in this item will assist greatly in creating the ideal growing environment for your plants.

Beau McManus

I love to grow great food and eat great food. Controlling the quality and supply of my food has always been a passion.

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