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Plants require water to grow. Humidity forms part of the water taken in by plants through leaves and stems.
However, for plants to thrive well, the humidity levels need to be kept at the optimum level at all times. When it’s too low, your plants suffer. And when the humidity gets high above desired levels, they struggle to survive.
In this article, we will discuss simple ways to lower humidity and keep it at an optimum level. But before we do that, let’s first discuss important things you need to know about the humidity.
What Exactly is Humidity?
Allow us to get a bit technical. Humidity is water held in the air in the form of vapor. You will also get to hear about relative humidity. It simply means air that is fully saturated with water vapor and cannot hold any more water.
For plants to thrive well, the relative humidity needs to be maintained at a certain level. If the humidity exceeds the required levels at any stage, your plants do not yield as required.
The Right Humidity Level For Your Grow Tent
At different phases, plants require different levels of humidity. The difference is brought about by the needs of water in each stage of growth. Therefore, keep your humidity always to be withing the following levels at all times.
Seedling Stage – 70% to 75% Humidity Level
At this stage, plants are developing. The roots cannot obtain enough water for the plant. This is why you need more moisture. Your baby plant will get plenty of water from the atmosphere.
Having a high humidity level will help the plants to thrive well as all parts mature and thrive well.
Vegetation Stage – 50% to 70% Humidity Level
At this stage, the plants have developed roots. However, they still need to absorb more water from the atmosphere to sustain the high rate of growth.
If the humidity is low, it will lead to a stunted growth rate.
Flowering Stage – 40% to 50% Humidity Level
In this stage, you need the humidity to be average to give a conducive environment for flowering. Average humidity will prevent molds or mildews from forming around the flowers.
Harvesting Stage – 45% to 50% Humidity Level
At the harvesting stage, you need humidity at an average level to ensure that the yield doesn’t become brittle and harsh.
Why Optimum Humidity Matters
As we have already seen in all stages of your plant growth, you will need a certain level of humidity in the air. This means that if the humidity is not kept to its optimum at any stage, the plant will not thrive well at that particular stage. And this will eventually affect all the other stages as well.
When humidity is at its optimum, plants use their leaves to absorb water to their systems.
And when humidity is too high, they tend to absorb much water to their systems through the leaves. As a result, the roots absorb less water. If the roots are not absorbing much water, it also means that they don’t absorb more nutrients from the soil or nutrient solution.
When this happens, the plants start suffering from mineral deficiencies.
Here is where you need to be careful and ensure that the humidity is at the optimum level.
Having the right humidity in your grow room encourages healthy, strong, and leafy plants. As a result, the plants grow as expected in every stage of their growth.
Additionally, optimum humidity prevents mold attacks on your plants. You won’t see bud rots and mold forming on your plants.
Simple Ways to Lower Humidity in Grow Tent When It’s Too High
1. Water Adequately
This is the first thing we will discuss. You need to avoid overwatering your plants if you wish to get optimum yields from your grow tent. It’s the most simple way of protecting your plants from high humidity.
When plants are overwatered, they absorb a lot of water. They release the excess water to the air through respiration. As a result, your grow tent ends up having more humidity than you expected.
Excess water in soil evaporates when temperatures in grow room rise. When the water evaporates, it leads to the same problem – high humidity.
And apart from the humidity, overwatering plants leads to damp and soggy soil that affects your plants negatively.
2. Don’t Mix Mature and Young Plants
We have already mentioned that plants at different stages require different levels of humidity. Therefore, when you are growing your crops, don’t mix their phases in one grow tent.
This is because different phases will need different levels of humidity.
And more dangerously, the mature plants will affect the growing plants. Plants that have matured, they have developed leaves. The leaves have big stomata that release more water during respiration. As a result, they increase the humidity in the grow tent.
The mature plants might not be affected; however, plants that are in growing stages will suffer from the high humidity coming from the mature plants.
The idea here is to ensure that all plants in a grow tent are at the same stage of growth.
3. Remove Unnecessary Water Points From Your Grow Tent
Take a look around the grow tent. If you find any container or anything holding water, take it out. Remove any supply of excess water in the grow tent.
When you have more water sources, it evaporates. Waters in trays and jars evaporate when temperatures rise or air blows over them.
And worst of all, stagnant waters can easily become a breeding ground for fungi and bacteria. This will cause a double problem. Your plants will be affected by the humidity and at the same time, attacked by diseases that come from the dirty waters.
Empty water reservoirs and drain stagnant waters away. Build a proper drainage system that removes excess water from the grow tent at all times.
Other times you might not need to remove the water supply points. All you need is to cover exposed water surfaces. Ensure you reduce the chances of water evaporation as much as you can.
4. Use Soils That Can Drain Water Easily
If we go back to science, you will remember there are three main types of soils – sandy, clay, and loam. All these different types of soils have different water-holding capacities.
Clay soil holds the highest level of water and it doesn’t drain it at all. Sandy soil, on the other hand, drains water very fast.
Loam soil lies in between clay and sand soil.
In most farming, loam soil is most preferred in farming. This is because it has a relative drainage capability, and at the same time, it retains nutrients.
Therefore, in your grow room, don’t use clay soil. It will retain much water that will eventually evaporate and increase the water vapor in your grow room.
We recommend that you get loam soil. It will drain a good amount of water easily.
However, if you would wish to drain much water, use sand soil. All you need is to keep an eye on the nutrients.
5. Improve Air Circulation In Your Grow Tent
Have adequate ventilation for your grow room. You need to have enough exhaust systems to vent your humid air from the tent. At the same time, you need to ensure fresh and low humid air is supplied to the grow room at all times.
To achieve this, you can have multiple inlet holes around your grow rooms.
And if you want to boost air circulation in your Grow room area, get Grow room fans. Buy quiet fans from Amazon and install them over your ventilations.
Depending on the size of your Grow tent, buy a fan with an adequate CFM.
The following are high-performance fans that you need to consider and buy for your Grow tent. Buy a fan that can match the CFM of your grow tent.
Read this article to calculate the CFM of your Grow room and pick the best fan (Kindly link this article here). Choose one of the following fans, and you will get the best performance for your Grow tent.
AC Infinity Cloudline S6 (Our Top Pick)
The fan is perfect for a mid-sized grow tent. It achieves an airflow of 351 CFM.
Key Features
- Ideal strength for a mid-size room
- Extremely quiet
- The variable setting for efficient power consumption
TJERNLUND M-67 Inline Duct Booster Fan
The fan attains a power output of 460 CFM. This means it can run for a long time without changing its performance.
Key Features
- Made with strong and high-end materials
- Efficient blade design to blog a huge volume of air
- Super quiet fan
Vortex 347 CFM S Line S-600 Fan 6”
With it, you will plant everything you would wish to plant in your tent or indoors.
Key Features
- Mounts easily
- Convenient with different speed controllers
- A super quietest tent grow fan even at the highest speed
Hurricane Inline Fan
This makes it a perfect choice for anyone with a small grow area.
Key Features
- Durable construction
- Super Quiet Fan
- Ease of installation
Terrabloom 10” Inline Duct Fan
It delivers a high airflow of up to 1065 CFM. At the same time, it’s cost-effective.
Key Features
- Runs optimally for a longer period
- Ultra-quiet fan
- A powerful CFM coverage with a low energy consumption
6. Insulate Your Grow Tent and Prevent Outside Humidity
Sometimes you will have to deal with humidity coming from outside the Grow room. You have limited options to reduce environmental humidity. However, you can prevent the humidity from affecting your grow tent.
To prevent this, buy and install insulators over your grow tent.
Reflectix BP24010 Series Foil Insulation is the best insulator you will find in the market.
7. Use a Dehumidifier
The most effective technique to deal with excess humidity from a grow tent is to use a Dehumidifier. A dehumidifier is a device specifically designed to remove excess moisture from the air.
And one of the best things about a dehumidifier is the fact that you can customize it to maintain the exact percentage of humidity as you would require in your Grow room.
For best performance, place the dehumidifier at the center of the Grow tent. And when you are buying a dehumidifier, pick the one with an automatic shut off feature.
It will dehumidify your air, and when it’s full or reaches your settings, it shits itself automatically.
Vremi 1,500 Sq. Ft. Dehumidifier is the best dehumidifier you can ever find in the market. It’s energy star rated, meaning it won’t raise your bills. And most importantly, it’s quiet. If your Garden is indoors, it won’t make noise for people around.
Final Verdict
You don’t have to watch and see your plants being destroyed by Humidity. You can apply simple techniques that won’t cost you much to lower humidity in Grow tents.
If you are looking for effective techniques, apply the simple hacks we have shared with you in this article. Combine several techniques to get the best out of the Grow tent.
Dehumidification is the most effective technique above all these methods. If you are looking for a permanent solution, go for it.
Most important, buy quality equipment. Whether its Grow tent or dehumidifiers, look for the ones we have recommended in this article. Click to each of them to check prices and buy them from Amazon.
