Keep Your Grow Tent Cool in the Summer

Growing plants indoors can cause high temperatures in the summer because there isn’t much room, and indoor equipment generates heat. Extreme heat harms plant life at every stage of development, from seed to harvest. Maintaining a steady temperature within your grow room or tent is essential for a fruitful crop. However, how can you keep the indoor environment at just the right temperature for plant growth? This is the most difficult aspect of keeping cannabis plants at optimal temperatures for cultivation. Still, several methods exist for cultivating fresh plants in a grow tent or a spare room.

If you want to produce cannabis indoors, a grow tent is your best choice. However, because of the tight seal, your growing space will quickly heat up. So, how do you keep the grow tent at an appropriate temperature so your plants thrive? This post will explain how to maintain a cool grow tent in the summer heat for optimal weed growth and harvesting.

The importance of maintaining an optimal temperature in a grow room

To get the most out of growing cannabis at home, taking charge and keeping a constant eye on the weather in your tent or grow room is necessary. In particular, temperature is crucial to cannabis plants’ well-being; when temperatures are too low, the plant’s biological processes decline, stunting its growth.

In addition, pests may flourish in warm conditions, wreaking havoc on your plants if they spread unchecked. In addition to promoting the spread of fungus and other infections that may swiftly spoil whole produce, higher temperatures frequently lead to higher humidity (because hot air can hold more moisture than cold air).

What’s the ideal grow tent temperature?

When growing cannabis indoors, the temperature plays a crucial role, and overheating your grow room might be fatal to your plants. Conversely, your plant may experience stunted development and perish if the temperature is too low.

Temperatures between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius (70 and 85 Fahrenheit) are optimal. To thrive while in the vegetative stage, a high temperature is ideal. At the flowering stage, however, temperatures in the grow chamber may be as low as 65-80°F (18-26ºC).

Methods for efficiently reducing the temperature in a grow tent

Your approach to cooling the grow room/tent may differ depending on where you live and the typical temperature range. You may not have to do anything to regulate the temperature in your grow room if you reside in a temperate climate. The same is true if you store your tent inside a building with a stable temperature.

However, if you reside in a place with hot summers or if the area where you have set up your grow room is susceptible to summer heat, you will likely need to take more extreme precautions to guarantee the temperatures in your space remain ideal. Some of these solutions may increase your tent’s operating expenses, influencing your choice to cultivate inside during the summer.

Here are some active and passive strategies to assist you in controlling the temperature in your grow room.

Passive strategies for summer grow tent heat management

• Electronics are inherently heat-producing. Keep all electronics (including ballasts, pumps, generators, and timers) outside the grow tent, not just your grow light. It will help keep your tent or room cooler and make it easier to keep track of everything electrical in your grow-op by having it all in one location.
• Put up your tent in a spot within your home where it won’t get too much sun. If you must keep your plants in a place that receives a lot of direct sunlight, invest in blackout shades to protect your plants.
• Be sure to exhaust air outside your growing space and use cold air for your intake fans. Exhausts should be vented outside or into a different room entirely (not the tent’s room) if possible. You may employ inline fans in the ducting to handle the air intake and exhaust. They let the heated air out and breathe in the cold air. The inline fans should replace the air in your grow tent at 1x each minute.
• On the other hand, exhaust fans work well to remove humid and stale air from your grow room. If the room has good air conditioning, you may set the exhaust fan such that it vents into the room. If it doesn’t work, you may always try directing the air out a window or somewhere else entirely.
• Grow overnight. Schedule your day’s activities for the evening. At night, the air temperature might drop by as much as 15°C.
• Cover your grow tent with rolls of flexible insulation to keep the environment inside the tent separate from the rest of your house. Insulation is a crucial component of any specialized grow room.

Active strategies for managing summer heat in your grow setup

• Carefully monitor your grow room’s temperature and humidity levels using a thermometer and hygrometer.
• Utilize cooled grow light fixtures. They will reflect part of the light onto your plants, allowing them to get the most out of it, and they will also help reduce the amount of heat given off by your lights. Low-cost and reliable grow light reflectors are a great addition to any indoor garden.
• You could want to put in a ballast that can be dimmed. Reducing the heat your grow lights produces is as simple as periodically turning down the wattage.
• Invest in fans to provide enough air circulation. Your cannabis grow chamber or tent will heat up much faster if the air is stagnant. When growing numerous plants at once, it is extremely important to maintain oscillating fans running above and below the canopy. Place your fans so that they blow air in opposite directions throughout your tent, preferably from your intake to your exhaust vents. If you need to, you can get bigger fans. Running bigger fans at lower settings is more efficient than using smaller fans at their highest settings.
• Use air conditioning and dehumidifiers to keep your grow room cold and dry. A portable air conditioner is ideal for cooling a grow tent by circulating cool air around the room in which the tent is located. If you can’t get the room’s temperature down enough by cooling the air outside, try putting it inside the grow tent. However, if your grow tent is large enough, this will work.

Cost-effective temperature management in grow tents for long-term sustainability

Maintaining a grow tent or room at a comfortable temperature during the warm summer months comes with a cost. Operating extra oscillating fans, intake and output systems, or air conditioners and dehumidifiers may drastically raise the total cost of your growth operations. Grow lights already require a large amount of energy on their own.

Your financial situation will determine how big of an impact this has on you. Suppose you are particularly concerned about your financial situation. In that case, you may consider using your grow tent from the fall through the spring, when the temperatures are often lower, and you won’t have to worry as much about the need for cooling. If you aren’t concerned about the additional expenses of cooling your tent or room, you ought to think about methods to minimize the energy footprint of your grow-op by investigating items like the following:

• The passive solutions described earlier. Check to see if simpler and less energy-intensive growing solutions are available before you go out and spend further money to acquire and operate more growing equipment.
• Sustainable methods of cultivating plants. While you may not be able to avoid installing fans to cool your tent, there are probably other things you can do to mitigate the impact your grow-op has on the surrounding environment.
• Taking the organic route. Not only can organic cannabis growth result in higher-quality cannabis but contrary to popular belief, it also uses much less money and energy than conventional methods. Implementing organic growing practices may help offset some of the expenses associated with running your business in the same way that increasing the energy effectiveness of your grow tent, or room does.

What temperature is too high for cannabis?

Temperatures between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius (70 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit) during the day and around 10 degrees colder at night are ideal for growing cannabis to maturity. Most cannabis strains can tolerate temperatures up to around 95 degrees Fahrenheit, but continuous exposure to temps over that can stunt plant development.

Identifying cannabis plants under heat stress

Remember that heat stress may affect cannabis plants at any stage of their development. Heat stress causes abnormal development that becomes obvious over time. Heat stress symptoms, as described here, may vary somewhat depending on your plants’ development stages.

Symptoms of heat stress in cannabis seedlings

Seedlings are very delicate and will almost always perish if they are subjected to heat stress for an extended time. Seedlings often show the following responses to heat stress:

• Reduced development
• New leaves are weak and rapidly droop.
• Wilting

Heat stress signs during cannabis’s vegetative stage

• Leaves that are curved and curled
• Frayed, browning leaf tips
• Brown patches on the upper leaves of the fan and sugar plant (if not treated, the lower leaves may also become brown and fall off).

Signs of heat stress on flowering cannabis plants

• Leaves that seem bleached and yellow
• Leaf curls
• Foxtailing
• An abnormally high number of white stigmas on the buds during harvest
• Flowers that are light and airy with minimal resin and fragrance

Enjoy cannabis indoor growing

The summer is cannabis’ natural growing season. Unfortunately, growing in a hot climate in a tent or room throughout the summer might be difficult. If you use passive and active methods to control the temperature in your grow tent, your indoor grow this summer should go off without a hitch. Remember that the size of your indoor garden may dictate some of your choices. To get the most out of your cannabis plant, you should know that it will need a significant investment of time, money, and energy.