How to Set up a Grow Tent

Indoor cannabis cultivation has become increasingly popular amongst both enthusiasts and serious cultivators. Beyond the general rise in interest, the surge in home growing has been fueled by increasing cannabis prices, taxes, and growing concerns over the health and safety of dispensary-sold products.

Setting up a grow tent allows you to optimize the plant’s growth cycle, enhance yields, and provide plants with ideal conditions, including light, temperature, and most importantly, privacy. 

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the step-by-step process of cannabis grow tent setup, from choosing the right equipment to creating the perfect environment for healthy, robust plants.

What is a Grow Tent?

A grow tent is an enclosed structure designed to create a controlled environment for indoor plant growing, particularly for cannabis.

It has become one of the most popular solutions for providing a managed space where lighting, temperature, humidity, and airflow can be precisely regulated. The grow tent setup is ideal for growing a wide variety of plants year-round, as it no longer depends on outdoor conditons or time of the year. 

Pros of Using a Grow Tent

There are many benefits to using a grow tent for cannabis growing compared to outdoor growing:

Controlled Environment

Grow tents allow you to control crucial environmental factors like light, temperature, humidity, and airflow. This is essential since slight changes in the environment can impact your cannabis plant's health, growth rate, quality, and yield.

Improved Lighting

Growing in a tent requires the use of a grow light, espeically LED grow lights, which will allow you to control light intensity, schedule, and even spectrum for optimal plant growth. The reflective interior of most grow tents also maximizes light distribution, ensuring that plants receive even exposure from all angles. This enhances photosynthesis and promotes healthier growth without wasting energy.

Odor Containment

Cannabis plants can produce strong, distinctive aromas, especially during the later weeks of flowering. A grow tent setup, when paired with a carbon filter, helps contain and filter these natural plant odors, maintaining privacy and minimizing the spread of strong smells throughout your home or neighborhood—often times the largest tell that someone is growing cannabis. 

Pest and Disease Control

Pests and disease are a real problem in growing. They can turn a prized crop into a near worthless plant. The enclosed and secluded nature of a grow tent provides a protective barrier against pests and airborne diseases, reducing the risk of infestations.

Efficient Use of Space 

Growing cannabis in tents makes it easy to create a dedicated growing space in small areas like closets, spare rooms, or garages. They keep the growing environment organized and separate from the rest of your living space, while also allowing for precise climate control in confined spaces.

Energy Efficiency

The enclosed design of grow tents helps retain light and heat, making them more energy-efficient. This results in lower utility costs, as grow lights, fans, and HVAC equipment don't need to work as hard to maintain ideal conditions.

Discreet Growing

Grow tents offer a discreet solution for indoor cannabis growing. With proper ventilation and cannabis odor control, they help maintain privacy, minimizing the risk of detection by smell or sight.

Year Round Growing

With the use of grow lights, cultivation inside a grow tent can continue year-round, regardless of outdoor conditions. Although running grow lights incurs costs, energy-efficient LEDs make this approach cost-effective, ensuring continuous harvests and offsetting seasonal limitations.

CO2 Utilization

Since grow tents offer a sealed environment, it's ideal for CO2 enrichment. CO2 can significantly boost yield and length of the growth cycles! Studies have shown that enriching CO2 levels around 1200 ppm can result in a 20% increase in yield, shortening the growth cycle and improving overall plant production.

Materials Needed for Grow Tent Setup

1. Grow Tent

The foundation of your setup! Choose the tent size based on how many plants you plan to grow and the space available in your home. Your style of growing will determine the size of tent you need:

• Smaller plants (Sea of Green - SOG): around 1 to 1.5 square feet per plant.
• Medium-sized plants (low stress training - LST): around 2 to 4 square feet per plant.
• Large plants (ScrOG method, mainline, or untrained): around 4 to 6 square feet per plant.

2. Grow Lights

As the most energy-efficient option, LED lights can greatly help plants grow, and offer a full spectrum of light which mimics natural sunlight. Their efficiency means they exude much less heat, reducing the need for intervention and additional environmental controls. Alternatives include: 

• High-Pressure Sodium (HPS)
• Double-Ended High-Pressure Sodium (DE HPS)
• Metal Halide (MH) lights
• Compact Flourescent Lights (CFL)

While these alternatives may consume more energy and generate more heat, they still have their pros. Refer to our previous guide to help you choose the right grow light for your needs.

4. Carbon Filter

As cannabis plants mature, they produce strong odors, particularly during the flowering stage. A carbon filter attached to your exhaust system will help neutralize these smells, ensuring discreet cultivation.

7. Environmental Sensors

Monitoring temperature and humidity levels is critical as well. A thermometer and hygrometer will allow you to check and maintain the optimal conditions inside your grow tent.

10. Growing Medium

Cannabis plants can be grown in soil or soilless mediums such as coco coir, perlite, rockwool, aeroponic or hydroponic systems. Organic soil enriched with nutrients is a more hands-off and beginner-friendly option, but each medium has its pros and cons depending on your growing style or method.

Growing cannabis with Hey abby's Drip Irrigation Mod Kit

Image via Hey abby grower Alexander RastaMan

14. Clips and Training Tools (Optional)

Low-stress training (LST) methods, such as bending and tying down branches, can help optimize light exposure and manage plant height. Clips or soft plant ties are useful tools for this.

How to Build a Grow Tent: FULL STEPS

Setting up a cannabis grow tent requires attention to detail and proper planning to ensure all your equipment is able to function properly, and your plants thrive. Here’s a comprehensive guide to help you build your own grow tent.

Choose Your Preferred Style/Medium/Method of Growing

Choose the style that fits your availability and needs best:

• Soil/Organic Growing: A great starting point for newer growers. It offers a more hands-off approach and requires less time in the actual grow tent. There is no nutritional input needed from the grower, only water and love.
• Coco Coir: Similar to soil grow, but requires nutrient input from the growers.
• Hydroponic Growing: It offers the most control, and is the most precise style of growing. But it also requires more work, time, and attention.

Choose the Right Location

Pick a discreet, accessible space in your home, such as a closet, spare room, or basement, which isn't too close to any windows or home appliances that might generate extra heat.

First, measure the space to ensure it accommodates the size of your grow tent and any equipment you'll be using. Make sure the area you choose has plenty of ventilation for air exchange and easy access to electricity for lighting and fans.

Assemble the Grow Tent

Unpack and assemble your grow tent according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Most grow tents have a metal frame with fabric panels. Check that all zippers are functioning properly and the fabric is securely attached to prevent light leaks and airflow disruption.

Set Up the Ventilation System

Install an exhaust fan near the top of the tent (since heat rises) to expel hot air, ideally positioned directly above the light. Attach ducting to direct the hot exhaust air outside or into another room.

For odor control, connect a carbon filter to the exhaust fan, ensuring it's properly sealed to prevent smell leaks. If you wish, you can even set up a passive intake vent or add a fan near the bottom of the tent to pull in fresh air.

Inside the grow tent, use oscillating fans inside to circulate air, prevent hotspots, and strengthen plant stems.

Install the Grow Lights

Position your cannabis grow lights inside the tent at the appropriate height, depending on the type of lights used (LED, CFL, or HPS). 

Some grow tents come with support bars or hooks for easy light hanging. Once your grow light is hung, adjust its height to maintain the recommended distance from the plant canopy to avoid light burn or stress.

For LEDs, this is typically 18–24 inches, while CFLs can be placed closer due to lower heat output. Connect the lights to a timer to automate the light cycle (18/6 for the vegetative stage, 12/12 for the flowering stage). You may find it beneficial to run the lights during the cooler parts of the day to reduce the use of HVAC equipment.

PRO TIP: My Samsung light allows me to use an extension cord to connect the light inside, but the ballast outside of the tent. This reduces heat emission and helps keep HVAC intervention minimal.

Setup Temperature and Humidity Sensors/Monitors

Place a thermometer and hygrometer inside the grow tent to monitor temperature and humidity levels. It's best to use mulitple in different locations throughout the tent to get a more accurate idea of the environmental conditions.

Set Up Watering/Runoff Systems

If you're growing in soil or coco coir and hand-watering, establish a watering schedule and regularly check the medium for moisture. For larger setups, consider an automated watering system, like drip irrigation, Ebb and Flow, or RDWC.

Whether you use an automated system or hand-water cannabis, you'll need a way to manage runoff or leachate. You can set up a runoff-drain system, place saucers under each plant, or use a tray to collect excess water.

Prepare the Growing Medium and Containers

Choose your preferred growing medium and select containers or grow pots based on your medium of choice.

Fabric pots are recommended because they allow better airflow to the roots, but plastic pots with drainage holes can also work and they are reusable.

Fill the pots with your chosen growing medium and set them in place in the tent. 

What to Do After Setting Up a Grow Tent

Once the you finish the grow tent setup and are ready to rock some plants, there are a few things I like to do before I actually put plants in:

• Set everything up and run the tent for a day with no plants. Regularly check on the monitors and sensors and get a feel for the environmental conditions during the "lights on" period. Make notes of any changes throughout the day and any improvements or changes that can easily be applied.
• Test run your irrigation system, or water the empty pots to make sure everything is plumbed and hooked up properly. You don't want to have to work around living plants while trying to connect pipes, pumps, or even worse, clean up a flood.
• Make sure your light and timer are working properly. Set the timer to go on and off, raise and lower the intensity, so you can visually confirm that it operates as intended.
• Turn everything off inside the tent, then walk in, zip and seal all the openings. Sit in the dark for about 5 minutes with your eyes closed. Open your eyes and check to see if there are any light leaks getting into the tent that may affect the plants' light cycle.
• Calibrate your pH meter! Make sure it's calibrated and clean before using it.

Final Words

Follow these steps and carefully check and double-check all your pumps, lights, timers... and ALL YOUR EQUIPMENT before actually starting a grow! Make sure you make the best choices for YOUR situation, circumstances, and conditions for a successful harvest.

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