How to Increase Humidity in Grow Tent? [9 Actionable Tips]

While you have a bunch of plants in a grow tent, you’ve to play that specific role which mother nature would do if they were under the open sky. And to be frank, it’s not easy at all.
One of the many responsibilities that you’ve to cover is to keep the grow tent (or room) humid enough. For a handful of reasons, the humidity can fall both in summer and winter. And if you don’t know how to increase humidity in grow tent or room, that’s the end of your hobbyist farming.
In this article today, we’ve crafted a list of 9 of the most actionable tips in this regard. We hope you’ve got a minute to crawl through them all.
Let’s start with some basics-
Why Proper Humidity is Super Important?
Although, any experienced grower has this answer with clean and clear validation. But in case you’re interested in this basic over again, here are the importance to maintain a high humidity in grow tent –
- Plants require a lot of water vapor in the nearby air to proceed with their physiological processes.
- Once you put ample humidity in the air for the plants, they will induce no stressful water suction through the roots. Therefore, the roots will be stress-free and healthy.
- Having a humid environment inside the tent induces a healthy growth rate and leafy buds.
- CO2 is an essential element of the photosynthesis process that plants have to inhale. But a proper humid environment keeps the plants from inhaling too much CO2.
What’s The Right Humidity for Grow Tent?
Well, this particular question will provide you with different answers at different stages of the grow plants. The generalized rule of thumb is, your tent should never have a humidity more than 70 percent at any given time.
But based on which stage of growing your plants are in, this percentage will deviate mostly in the lower end. As an example, at the seedling stage, the plants are need of most humidity. So, you have to maintain it to 70% on average.
With the growth of plants, the requirement of humidity decreases. At the end stage, namely the harvesting stage, this requirement falls into 40%.
9 Tips on How to Increase Humidity in Grow Tent
Tip 1 of 9: Use A Humidifier
The best and the most efficient way to raise the humidity of a tent is to use a humidifier. In fact, these electric systems are supposed to provide any given space with vaporized water.
But if you finally get to use one, make sure to keep it under firm control. Otherwise, it will raise the humidity to an intolerable level, and that will affect negatively on the plants.
To put control on humidifiers, some of the models come up with built-in automatic regular (known as humidistat) as well. All you have to do is to put the initial program into that.
If you have a larger grow tent (or a grow room somehow), make sure to get a humidifier with larger water tanks. For smaller tents, smaller tanks will do a fine job. Either way, you should not compromise with the best humidifier for grow room in terms of performance and durability.
Tip 2 of 9: Keep Plenty Of Open Water Surfaces
This is a really cool tip that works for both small and big grow tent systems. You see, whenever the air is dried up, it evaporates water molecules from whatever water surfaces it has around.
Use this science and provide your tent with enough open water surfaces. This can be done by putting a bucket full of water inside the tent. Also, you can put wet towels, wet clothes, etc in case you’re running out of ground space.
Wherever you put these water sources, make sure that a fan is nearby to keep the air upon it circulating. Otherwise, it will be quite localized and will humidify only a partial area of the tent.
Tip 3 of 9: Set The Light System Right
Light has several things to do about the humidity of any given space. And with grow room or tent, it’s no different.
If the amount of light that passes through the tent is high, that will increase the amount of heat in the tent. As a passive impact, the humidity will increase as well. Therefore, you can follow this technique to enhance the humidity of your tent as well.
But, beware of the excessive amount of light, as they will impact quite negatively on the grow plants. It’s advised to maintain ambient light and temperature that balanced both issues of light and humidity.
Tip 4 of 9: Optimize The Extractor Fans
An important part of venting your tent is to use extractor fans. And no way lets you grow without them.
That being said, too much ventilation will take the obvious humidity out of the tent. Result? Dry air and dying plants.
The best practice is, however, to maintain a perfect air exchange rate through these venting fans. Ensure that your fans are getting ample fresh air, and the air is not drying us as well. Specially in winter, this is easier to do.
Tip 5 of 9: Use An Air Conditioner
Let’s catch it from the last tip of the list, which was to slow down the venting fans. That advice suits fine when it’s winter. But in summer, you have to keep them rolling quite fast. Otherwise, it’s hard to keep the temperature of the tent under the limit.
However, there is one way to decrease the temperature of the tent as well. And that is to use an air conditioner. In summer, you are supposed to use one anyway.
A good quality air compressor will keep the temperature under 20-degree Celsius (which is ambient in most grow systems). And such a low temperature will also keep the humidity high.
Tip 6 of 9: Lower The Surrounding Temperature
The trick that we’ve stated before, works equally for both inside and outside of the tent. We’re talking about keeping the temperature low in the room where the tent is located.
Once the surrounding temperature will be low, the humidity will be sufficient in there. And that will stop the humid air inside the tent to come out through the vent fans.
So, passively, you’re keeping the tent humidity from decreasing.
Tip 7 of 9: Keep Air Circulating Around The Tent
Sometimes, there comes a fall in humidity in some parts of the tent, where the other parts might have ample humidity. And that happens because of the lack of proper air circulation around the tent.
Therefore, having a good raise in humidity is one of the many benefits of air circulation around the tent. For that, you can use stand up fans, extractor fans, clip fans and so on.
The geometry or the placement pattern of the fan plays an important role in this regard. You have to put them in the right places, with right angles and right rotational power. Overall, you have to make it certain that air from each corner of the tent is being circulated.
Tip 8 of 9: Use CO2 Sources
In one of the previous points, we’ve instructed you to put control of the high ventilation rate of the tent. And that’s because such ventilation will take the humidity away.
But plants require fresh air. Because plants source CO2 from fresh air, which is super important for photosynthesis.
So, what would you do to keep the ventilation in control, and the supply of CO2 running?
Yeah, you guessed it right. You can use an artificial source of CO2. There are several variations and you can choose the right one based on the specs of your grow system.
Tip 9 of 9: Keep Yourself Alert
No matter whatever humidity requirement your tent gives you, you’ve to ensure that you’re aware of it instantly. What we mean is, you should keep yourself up to date about the humidity and temperature of the tent. And once you notice a fall in temperature or humidity, take immediate steps to bring them back in normal situations.
Bottom Line
Take a bow. You’ve just read a 1500 words article that explains every possible way of how to increase humidity in grow tent. Hopefully, you’ll always find one or more of them purposeful whenever you need to raise humidity in grow tent.
Happy gardening!