Have you seen your plants needing water? Have you seen your plant leaves twisting upwards? Perhaps it is too dry in your grow tent – figure out how to increase humidity in grow tent or grow room.
Each indoor grower knows that temperature and humidity levels are the vital for giving your plants a great environment to give exceptional yields. Knowing how to control and increase the relative humidity in a grow tent is something that indoor growers should learn.
Humidity levels of around 45 per cent to 75 per cent are great for growing plants. Yet, if your grow tent is just at 20 per cent to 40 per cent, take immediate action, or else you might end up damaging your plants.
Low humidity within a grow tent causes hindered growth and poor development of your plant. It could prompt dampness and poor yields in the long run.
That is the reason you should raise the humidity in a grow tent. It can be accomplished by either relying on a humidifier or simple tips and tricks using household items.
We will be discussing different ways by which you can increase humidity in your grow room or grow tent without using a humidifier. But, before that, let us go through some basics of humidity and its importance.
- Basics of Humidity:
- What are the Ideal Humidity Levels?
- Why is Humidity Important?
- What are the Adverse Effects of Improper Humidity Levels?
- How to Increase Humidity in Grow Room/ Grow Tent Without a Humidifier?
- Build Your Own DIY Grow Room Humidifier
- To make this DIY humidifier very effective, here are a few tips you must keep in mind:
- Optimization of Extractor Fans for More Humidity
- Keep The Ambient Temperature Cool
- Fuse Old And Young Plants
- Start Using Propagators
- Remove Half Of Your Fluorescent Grow Lights
- Use Swamp/Evaporative Cooler
- Make Fogger/Atomizer Your Best Friend
Basics of Humidity:
Humidity is the amount of water vapour present in the air. There are three different ways to measure humidity, and they are absolute, relative, and specific.
You can also measure it by using a hygrometer. It is one of your most essential tools when it comes to gardening, especially when it comes to indoor gardening.
Since we will be discussing indoor gardening, we will be focusing on relative humidity. Relative humidity measures how much water is present all around versus the maximum amount of water present at a specific temperature.
Plants can bloom at different relative humidity levels. However, it would always depend on the temperature of your grow tent.
Note: If the air is warmer, it can hold more water.
What are the Ideal Humidity Levels?
At every stage, the ideal level of humidity changes. Below is the perfect requirement of humidity at every growing stage:
During Cloning: 70-80%
During Vegetation: 40-60%
During Flowering: 35-55%
During Harvesting: 30%-35%
In the next section, we will be learning about why is it important to maintain humidity levels at all times.
Why is Humidity Important?
It is not overly complicated that plants need water to live. Furthermore, the source is through the root and through the ‘Stomata’.
Stomata is available across every one of the green parts of a plant, which is in direct touch with the air. Along these lines, rather than water, stomata admissions ‘water fume’ through them for the plants.
When there’s no bounty of water fume noticeable all around, it influences contrarily on the growth and health. It also abbreviates their lives and the development process. In the long run, significant issues like lack of hydration, stomata closing, plant parching, insect invasion, and so on happen when there is insufficient humidity in the grow room.
What are the Adverse Effects of Improper Humidity Levels?
Plants use water as a coolant. They assimilate a lot of water, with about 95 per cent going to the roots, the plant’s vascular design, and afterwards leaving through the stomata. Just about 5% goes to building new cells.
A blend of high temperatures and dry air makes a high vapour pressure shortage between the leaves of your plants and the air. Notwithstanding, plants need to exchange gases through the stomata.
It exposes your plants to the dry states of the external environment. Your plants will try to get more moisture to counter the drying effect; however, this makes it harder for plants to sustain.
Growing plants become stressed from the additional pressure they apply on the roots to take up water and counter humidity shortfall. Plant dehydration likewise prompts stomata closing, which makes the plant not be able to get more water.
Lower levels of humidity force the roots to take a lot of water, yet it includes excess supplements that could burn the tips of the leaves.
The absence of humidity also depicts the probability of plant parching, where the plant becomes exposed to invasion by bugs like moulds, white powdery buildup, and bugs.
Now that you know the importance of humidity in a grow room. Let us discuss the ways by which you can raise the humidity in your grow room or grow tent without the use of a humidifier.
How to Increase Humidity in Grow Room/ Grow Tent Without a Humidifier?
Build Your Own DIY Grow Room Humidifier
As we know, if more water flows around the grow system, more water will evaporate. Hence, the humidity in the room will increase. It is pretty much the idea by which we will be building our DIY humidifier.
Before that, let us discuss the static and dynamic water sources in a grow room!
Dynamic Water Sources: Smart Pots, Water Trays and Drip Watering System.
Static Water Sources: Water Tub, Damp Sponges and Water Gallons Counter.
The dynamic water sources are very of the system demand. If your system does not support it, you can not use them to deliver water vapour.
However, the static sources may be very successful here, as they are not the requirements of the system.
Take ‘putting a damp sponge’ for instance.
If you put a couple of wet sponges close to the light sources, the heat from the light will evaporate the water from the sponge. The same thing can be done using wet towels as well.
The result? More humidity in the grow room.
You can do the same with the gallon counter also. If you put the watering system properly, the gallon counter will be the water container. In case it is placed in a not too cold spot in the room, that may fill in as a humidifier too.
For both of these systems, sufficient heat and airflow is an absolute necessity to keep up humidity for grow tent. In this way, place them some place with a pleasant temperature and abundance of air flow.
To make this DIY humidifier very effective, here are a few tips you must keep in mind:
- Make sure that there is good airflow right onto the surfaces of these water containers.
- Do not overheat the water to disintegrate rapidly. Hot vapour can cause an abrupt hike in the temperature.
- Filter each drop of water that is being used both in dynamic and static water sources.
- Keep the water sources at a reasonable distance from the lights. Exceptionally closely positioned lights and water sources may prompt a short circuit.
Optimization of Extractor Fans for More Humidity
Fans play a significant part in venting air in and out in a grow room or tent. The outside air got by the extractor fans also welcomes a steady drop in humidity level.
Actually, faster running fans cause the air to dry quicker.
Be that as it may, it is basically impossible to stop these fans, and let the humidity rise in the grow room. That is outright nonsense.
Hence, it would be best if you focused on the base speed of the fan, alongside the number of hours when they would run. For the complete optimization, using fan regulators is a brilliant idea.
You can make a couple of trails with various fan speeds and track down the base speed, which gives you an optimal temperature of 68-77°F and ideal humidity of 60 per cent or less.
Moreover, decreasing the number of extractor fans is a great idea. Lesser in number, yet greater is limit that is the thing that the extractor fan system needs to be in a grow room.
Keep The Ambient Temperature Cool
Regardless of whether it is a grow room or tent, there will be a general environment.
In case it is a tent, it very well maybe someplace in a room, wardrobe, basement, and so on. In case it is a room, the surrounding environment will be on the opposite side of the wall.
Regardless, the temperature of this surrounding climate directly influences the temperature of the room/tent itself. Furthermore, as you most likely are aware, the temperature directly affects humidity-
High Ambient Temperature – High Grow Temp-Low humidity
Low Ambient Temperature – Low Grow Temp-High Humidity
During summer, the first situation is bound to happen. In this way, keep a decent ventilation system on work to keep the room cool.
Also, you can have a go at using an air conditioner or climate control system if your budget allows so. Keep the doors and windows open, and welcome on however much natural ventilation as could reasonably be expected.
Nonetheless, there is a possible situation where the surrounding temperature of a tent is probably going to be hazardous.
Furthermore, that is the point at which you vent in the same room.
In this way, you have to take extraordinary care to keep the grow tent room cool. Using a smaller split air conditioner along with a dehumidifier may help.
Fuse Old And Young Plants
It is a well-known fact that bigger plants will take the light, nutrients, and air from the younger ones.
Unexpectedly, the relative humidity in a grow tent will increase once you begin adding plants, particularly huge ones, since they breathe more and produce more relative humidity.
At the point when your bigger plants breathe, they discharge carbon dioxide and water vapour, subsequently taking care of their younger pals.
Bigger plants boast bigger leaves and more stomata, which means they can release more water vapour after evaporation. Your growing plants would then be able to use this water vapour.
The key is to not stuff the bigger plants to ensure your growing plants get a good amount of air, light, and supplements.
Start Using Propagators
Seedlings can readily germinate all alone. However, you can accomplish a better growth rate of growing plants by bringing the humidity up in your grow tent using propagators.
Using propagators, for example, a covered propagator and a polyethylene or glass cover sheet, will keep the seeds from drying out.
They can hold high humidity levels in your grow tent, making sure your seedlings do not stress their root systems while developing and growing.
Remove Half Of Your Fluorescent Grow Lights
Oh well, the standard solutions are generally overlooked. You can reduce temperatures by taking out a couple of your fluorescent grow lights.
Well, light intensity should not trouble you since your plants need not bother with much light as of now.
Use Swamp/Evaporative Cooler
Through different strategies for DIY humidifying, you may need to build the temperature of grow room. That is to say, these methods need water holders, which will naturally evaporate water when there is sufficient heat around.
Be that as it may, this may cause a challenging hike in the temperature, right?
To meet the two ends of cooling and humidifying, swamp coolers are to rescue you. They are also called evaporative coolers, which brings us to their functioning guideline.
At the point when water is transformed into a vaporous state, it requires energy. Also, that energy is sourced from the warmth heat close by. Accordingly, the temperature is dropped to a significant level, and cold water is released. Swamp coolers do the same.
Along these lines, it fills in as both a climate control system and humidifier at the same time.
Make Fogger/Atomizer Your Best Friend
With regards to working with the super low volume of fog for grow room use, Foggers or Atomizers are the go-to options. Rather than water splashes, it will spray a mist of up to 10-46 microns. Furthermore, it will not gravitate and will give a substantial boost to the humidity level of the room.
They can contain up to 2 to 3 gallons, and it is sufficient even for a 20×20 grow room.
We hope this article turns out to be fruitful or resourceful to you when it comes to raising the humidity levels without using a humidifier.