Grow Tent VS Grow Room (Which is Best?)
When you begin the journey of growing your own marijuana, providing the proper growing conditions is of the utmost importance, even if the plant is sometimes called a weed. Yes, marijuana will grow in conditions not suitable for other plants, however, getting the plant to grow to its full potential will provide you with big, luscious buds ready to be enjoyed. So, why not do it right from the beginning.
Grow tent versus grow room which is best? Both options are good for growing marijuana with a couple of exceptions. A grow tent is easier to keep warm and provide the light needed and is easier to keep private. A Grow room provides more area to work in, air flow will not be an issue, however, keeping your plants hidden might be a problem.
Those are just a few pros and cons of growing in either grow tents or grow rooms and they are just my own observations, which I am more than happy to share with you in depth in this article. Of course, all the information I provide in this article and this website is for entertainment purposes only and it is up to you to know if it is legal to grow marijuana where you live. I live in Canada so I can grow up to 4 plants at a time. I love it! Anyways, let’s get on with the article.
Up first, we will talk about grow tents.
Do You Need a Tent to Grow Indoors?
Is a grow tent necessary? No, not really, however, there are benefits of using a tent. My two main reasons for using a grow tent is privacy and keeping my grow contained to a smaller area. I should add that a tent is also portable so if you decide you don’t like the location, it is easy to pick up and move somewhere else in your home. For instance, in the summertime, I will have a tent in the garage and then in the winter I put it in the basement. Remember, I live in Canada. Let’s look at why I would choose a tent over a grow room.
- Privacy and safety. Even though it is legal to grow 4 plants at a time in Canada, there is still a stigma attached to the hobby of marijuana growing and smoking. There is also an issue of safety. Someone might want to help themselves to your plants, especially when they start to display big, juicy buds. When you use a tent, it would be very hard for most people who are not growers themselves to know what you are doing.
- Containment. When using a grow tent, it is much easier to control heat and humidity. It doesn’t take as much effort to keep the grow tent heated, as it would for a grow room. Humidity is much easier to control as well in the smaller space.
- Portability. A grow tent can be moved plain and simple. You might think one location is the perfect spot to setup then quickly find out it causes issues for whatever reason. If that happens, you just move the tent to a new location like I do from my garage to my basement, depending on the time of year.
- Light cycles. I am adding one more point, as I feel it is an important one. It is important to provide a specific amount of lighting to your plants. It is also very important to ensure your plants are getting complete darkness when the lights are supposed to be off. Having an open grow room might be difficult to achieve this compared to a smaller closed in area like a tent.
I want to answer a few commonly asked questions about grow tents to further help you with your decision on which is best for you, a tent or a room.
How Do You Set Up a Grow Tent?
Grow tents like this Vivosun tent on Amazon are super easy to setup and very economical to purchase. I know this because I have one!
Just about anyone can set up a grow tent. It’s even easier to put together than a camping tent.
- Using the instructions supplied, just assemble the poles and place inside the tent where directed to and before you know it, your tent will be up and ready for use.
Yes, it’s really that easy to assemble a grow tent.
How Tall Does a Grow Tent Need to Be?
The height required for your grow tent will be determined by the type of cannabis you plan on growing. The most common heights for a typical grow tent are 48”, 60” and 72”. There are other heights, however, those are the most common. So, which one is right for you?
If you know you are only going to be growing Indica plants, then a 48” tent should be good enough as Indica’s usually don’t grow very tall.
If it is Sativa that you want to grow, then the 60” and higher tents will be required as Sativa can get quite tall and will need room to stretch.
For examples, here are a couple on Amazon I like.
If you do buy a shorter tent and want to grow Sativa afterwards, you can always train the plant to grow horizontally by laying it over tying it down as it grows. This also causes the plant to grow much larger buds, so you end up with a substantially larger crop. Win-win!
How Many Plants Can You Fit in a 4×4 Grow Tent?
Well, if you live in Canada, you are legally allowed to grow 4 plants at a time so I will go with 4 plants. It just happens to work out though that 4 plants would work in that tight of a space. If you only grew 2 pot plants, they would have much more room to grow to their full potential.
The problem that comes to mind when jamming in so much plant in a tight space means the light might not be able to penetrate lower down and the amount of buds you get will be limited.
Another scenario is to only grow 1 pot plant in a 4’x4’ tent, which means you can keep other items in the tent like a heater, fan and any additional growing supplies needed.
How Do You Set Up a Grow Room?
There is no secret to setting up a grow room. Basically, you need the supplies for growing your weed and that’s pretty much it.
Things to consider will be air flow, lighting and darkness. We will discuss these things briefly below. Other items such as fertilizers, heaters and humidifiers might be required, depending on where you are in the world.
- Air flow is important for strengthening the plant, bringing fresh air into the room and getting rid of stale air and odor from the plant(s). This means a fan is a good idea as is some sort of ventilation system to allow fresh air in and old air to be forced out. With a small grow tent, it is much easier to accomplish this.
- Having the right lights is crucial to a successful grow. If you want the maximum amount of buds possible, then purchase the most powerful light you can afford. In a big grow room, you will need a way to hang the lighting over the plants at the right height. You will also have to be able to adjust the lighting as the plants grow. In a big room, this might be harder to accomplish than a tent.
- Darkness is your friend when it comes to growing big juicy buds. A lot of growing occurs at night when your plants sleep. You want complete darkness for the 12 to 16 hours your plants are put in this state.
- If light is introduced midway each night, you will mess up the plants growth and you could end up turning a female plant into a hermaphrodite plant. You will have to stay completely out of the grow room during this phase of the day.
- With a grow tent, you can be in the same room as the tent with lights on and the inside of the tent will be dark. I guarantee you won’t be able to stay away from those plants every single night.
If you consider these 3 things, you will have a really good idea on how to set up your room. Don’t forget you might want to add heat and humidity.
How Often Should Air Be Exchanged in Grow Room?
Honestly, if you are using a large room like a bedroom as a grow room, you probably don’t have to worry about air exchange as the air flowing from your furnace should do a good enough job.
If you have boiler heat and no forced air furnace, then you might consider having the air exchanged. I don’t know what the large commercial marijuana grow-ops do. I would suggest twice a day is sufficient. Once is probably enough. Just remember that the more often the air is exchanged means the harder it is to keep the room at a specific temperature and humidity. I like a hot stuffy room for growing pot.
How Many Plants Can I Grow in a 10×10 Room?
I saw this question online and thought it would be fun to answer. Again, since I live in Canada, I can only legally grow up to 4 marijuana plants at a time so that is all I would say you could grow in a 10’x10′ room.
That being said, if you live in a country where the sky is the limit, you could fit a plant in every 4 square feet comfortably. This would give each plant enough room to grow to their full potential, hopefully providing you with ounces upon ounces of smoke-able bud.
Of course, you could jam in way more plants. I see it all the time online in forums, Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook, where the pictures show a sea of marijuana plants in a grow room.
Conclusion Which is Better a Grow Tent or Grow Room?
I think it is obvious, I prefer a grow tent over a grow room. I just prefer the smaller contained area, the portability and so on.
It doesn’t mean a grow room isn’t just as good or better. If I had a room, I could designate to just grow pot in then maybe I might lean that way. For now, however, it’s all about the grow tent for me.
If you are interested in getting started with a grow tent kit that supplies you with everything you need aside from the pot, soil and marijuana, then check out this amazing option for a grow tent kit on Amazon.
If you buy a grow tent you will want to know the different ways to heat it. I have an excellent article on the subject. How To heat a grow tent.
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