The early season is a really good time for us to explore the various equipment we use for growing from seed. So, over the next week or so, we’ll be doing deep dives into our gear. We’ll discuss the what’s, why’s & how’s. Let’s start with our grow tent!
We’ll admit, this is a luxury item for us and is absolutely unnecessary to grow from seed. It could just as well be a table with lights over it. However, we find many uses for it over the entire year and as “serious plant people,” having a dedicated growing space is definitely a quality of life item.
Our unit is 4 foot by 4 foot, holding eight 1020 trays very comfortably. It’s a flexible space, allowing us to grow not just seedlings but also full size plants if needed. The reflective walls reflect light back at the plants, increasing the “bang per watt” of our lighting.
The primary use for our tent is to act as our germination space. Since it’s enclosed, we can easily maintain “relatively warm” temperatures (about 75F), which is optimal for most “fast” germination. We have an exhaust fan connected to a temperature controller, which simply vents into our home for additional home heat.
Further into air circulation, we also have a couple of circulation fans to move air within the tent. These help us counter a disease called damping off, a common threat to young seedlings. These fans circulate air while our lighting is on, turning off when they are off.
We’ll get into the technicalities of our lighting later, but we have somewhat unique LED lighting in here. It runs for 14 hours a day, a good balance between quality growth and energy savings. Typically between 10 and 16 hours is where you want to be.
We opted to install two 2×4 tables in our tent. This raises things off the ground, making everything much easier to work on. We find that there’s a direct relationship between “ease of use” and “likelihood to care for it” in our growing practices.
We’ll be showing an alternative to this kind of approach soon because it’s helpful to know that going this far is overkill. But, we also really like our grow tent and it performs many critical functions for our gardens and house plants!
