Grow tents are a huge boon to city-bound home growers without sufficient garden space. These tent are available in sizes small enough to fit and operate in a closet, or large enough to make a spare room or deck into a living room. They basically give growers a portable greenhouse that allows them to control all aspects of light, temperature and humidity.
These environmental variables are important to growing plants and flowers safely, and underscore some of the key advantages of grow tents. For indoors settings, pests like spider mites are a common threat to plants. This is partly due to the fact that they’re small, and not easily visible without magnification, so that they’re presence is only suspected after plants have been nibbled down. But the key reason is the warm environment in which spider mites thrive, which is between 70 and 80 degrees. Grow tents can be set to around 60 degrees to discourage spider mite infestation.
Mold, which also thrives indoors under warm, dark conditions, can also be abated with a grow tent. Grow boxes and tents have use HID grow lights reflected by the canvas’ silvered interior lining—at least in newer models. The growth of bud mold, also known as gray mold, can be further prevented by maintaining a similar 60 degree temperature inside and attached an exhaust fan to one of the tent’s ports. Keep the humidity level at or below 50%.
It was mentioned that new models featured silvered lining, which is usually made of Mylar. This is important to maximizing the amount of light from HID grow lights, which are far less efficient for inducing photosynthesis than the best LED grow lights (tri-band, which emphasizes the Photosynthetically Active Radiation zone of the spectrum to which chlorophyll is most responsive). However, since Mylar is 30% more reflective than lining made of white plastic, the light inefficiency is mitigated somewhat.
Perhaps the most important reason to avoid grow tents with white plastic is that they’ve been found to induce toxic offgassing in plants, turning them yellow or white. Offgassing is the release of chemical fumes from volatile organic compounds. Most drivers are familiar with offgassing from the smell of a new car’s interior. However, many plants and flowers are particularly sensitive to offgassing (sometimes known as outgassing) and, unlike drivers in cars, spend days at a time sealed inside of a toxic environment. Most grow tents that use plastic interior lining are out of production, but anyone shopping online for used models should pay careful attention to the type of inner lining being used.