How Many Plants Can I Fit in a X by X Grow Tent? (2024)

If you’ve been researching this question for a while, you’ve probably come across ten different answers for each tent size.There’s a reason for that.

Cannabis plants vary greatly in size, depending on strain, pot size, growing method and more. The good news is: you control all of this, and with it, you ultimately control the size of your plants.

The main way you do this is through the growing method you use.

So, let’s look at the most common tent sizes and figure out how many plants you can fit in each, depending on your growing method.

Below that, we’ll include a rundown of each method discussed, with pros and cons of each, in case you’re not completely familiar with them.

How Many Plants Can I Fit In A 2 x 2 Grow Tent?

Most people will grow a single plant in a 2 x 2 tent. You can put it in a 3 gallon or a 5 gallon pot and use techniques like low stress training and lollipopping or other types of pruning to ensure your plant fills out the space with the maximum number of colas.

Alternatively, you could use the Sea Of Green method (abbreviated SOG) to grow a larger number of smaller plants. Doing this, you can get 4, or even more, plants into this space. As mentioned, we’ll cover the pros and cons of each of these methods below.

As for beginning with the 2×2 size,I know there are smaller grow tents than 2 by 2 feet, but this is the smallest size we want to consider here. Really small grow tents are not generally meant for a full-cycle grow. They are meant specifically for seeding or cloning, and some of the slightly larger ones for vegging.

How Many Plants Can You Fit In A 2 x 4 Grow Tent?

Since this tent is exactly twice as large as the previous one, you’re probably thinking you can fit twice as many plants inside, assuming they are the same size. And you’re right.

If you keep your plants small, you can fit 8 or more of them in a 2 x 4 foot grow tent. If you let them grow to a “normal” size, you can get two in a 2 by 4 area.

How Many Plants Fit In A 3 x 3 Grow Tent?

The 3 by 3 size is when things get interesting. You suddenly have a lot of options. You can fit 4 plants in this size tent, but you’d have to keep them on the smaller side. You could us the SOG technique and fit even more plants in there. You could grow 9, or even more.

Or you could go the other way. You could grow a single plant. Obviously, you have to keep it from growing too tall, since grow tents have a limited height.

You’d want to use low stress training and/or other techniques to ensure the plant grows wide and fills the tent with as many bud sites as possible, without growing too tall. Our guide to low-stress training can help.

How Many Plants Can I Fit In A 4 x 4 Grow Tent?

This is the most common tent size for a home grow, perhaps because it is perfect for a 1000 watt HID light or an equivalent LED grow light. It’s also compact enough to fit comfortably in most homes.

As with the 3×3, you have room for a ton of flexibility. You could grow one large (meaning wide, but not super tall) plant, 4 “regular-sized” ones, or 16+ using SOG.

How Many Plants Can You Fit In A 5 x 5 Grow Tent?

A 5×5 grow tent is also great for a 1000 watt equivalent grow light. The best LED fixtures cover five by five feet.

If you do SOG, you can get 25+ plants in a 5 by 5 space. If you like to let your plants get larger, you could grow 4 fairly large marijuana plants in one of these tents. Some even grow a single huge plant in a 5×5.

How Many Plants Fit In A 4 x 8 Grow Tent?

Since a 4 by 8 foot grow tent is exactly twice as large as the 4×4, you can fit twice as many plants inside. Using two 1000 watt equivalent lights, like the Spider Farmer 4000, you can easily grow two huge plants, 8 good sized ones or 32 or more small ones in a sea of green grow.

How Many Plants Can I Fit In A 10 x 10 Grow Tent?

Finally, we’ve got the humongous 10 by 10 foot tent. It has 4 times the floor space of a 5 by 5, so you can grow 4 times the plants. However, you do want to make sure you leave some space in there for you to access all of the plants. But you can do that by simply keeping them a bit smaller.

As such, you can grow 100 or more small plants (though you might want to reduce that a bit to give yourself an aisle so you can get to every plant), 25 good-sized weed plants, or 4 humongous cannabis plants.

What Size Plants Should You Grow?

The number of marijuana plants you can fit in any tent size depends entirely on the size of the plants. And that is something you can control. Some growers prefer fewer large plants, while others prefer many small ones. There are advantages and disadvantages to both growing methods. Let’s take a look at each.

Many Small Plants (Sea Of Green)

Sea of Green is a growing method whereby you keep your plants small, so that you can fit a whole bunch of them in your grow area. The result looks like a sea of green.

This is probably the easiest growing method and also the fastest, which is why it is quite popular. You switch the plants over to flowering very early, to prevent them from ever getting large. As a result, each plant generally only has one bud site.

Because you have so many plants, you still end up with approximately the same number of bud sites per area as you would with fewer larger plants that each have multiple bud sites.

However, the buds are smaller than those on a larger plant. But because you switch to flowering so quickly, it takes much less time to get from beginning to harvest, meaning you can harvest more often, if you grow year round

Advantages

• Short grow cycle allows for more harvests per year
• No (or minimal) pruning or trimming required
• Does not require much vertical space
• Does not require much soil (or other medium)

Disadvantages

• Smaller colas than other methods (but more harvests)
• Some jurisdictions have limits on how many plants you can grow legally
• More plants to water and provide nutrients for

One Huge Plant

If you only grow a single plant, you don’t have to do as much work watering and feeding nutrients. But you will have to do a lot of stress training, pruning and trimming.

You’ll want to train your plant to grow horizontally, so that it spreads our sideways more than vertically. Once it has spread out to the side enough to fill the grow space, allow it to grow vertically from there.

This results in the maximum number of bud sites to fill your area, which means a higher yield. How much weed does one plant produce? That depends on the size. Figure on harvesting about 2 ounces of dry but per square foot of are that plant covers.

You’ll want to trim your plant and perhaps lollipop it, to ensure that as many bud sites as possible are exposed to the light and that the plant devotes all of its resources to growing those bud sites and nothing else.

One popular method for getting a plant to do this is the Screen of Green (SCROG) method. Growers use a net or trellis to hold the branches in place, once they start growing vertically.

This is a great way to ensure a flat canopy, so that all viable bud sites receive full light exposure. And growth beneath the net is removed, since it does not receive much light anyway. For more, check out our comparison of Screen Of Green vs Sea Of Green here.

Advantages

• Great way to maximize yields if the number of plants is limited by law
• Much less effort to water and feed a single plant
• Larger buds, and usually more potent

Disadvantages

• Longer grow cycle allows for more harvests per year
• Requires stress training, trimming and pruning
• Requires more vertical space, though this can be limited using a method like SCROG
• Requires larger pots and more soil or other medium

Several Medium to Large Plants

Finally, you can grow any size in between. There really is no limit here. If you are looking for an average size for a marijuana plant, you can figure about 4 square feet per plant, which means an area of about 2 by 2 feet.

You’ll want to keep these plants in a 3 or 5 gallon pot and train them to some extent. A SCROG grow works well with plants of this size to maximize yields. Top the plants several times to increase the number of colas and keep height in check. Read the article “How Many Times Can You Top A Plant?” for more.

This type of grow is generally our recommendation and probably gives you the best results overall, though this is debatable. In the end, any one of these methods can work well and it really comes down to personal preference.

When deciding on a tent size and the number of plants to put in that tent, there are a few more things you should take into consideration.

Other Things to Consider

We already mentioned this, but you want to make sure you have enough space in the tent to be able to get to every plant to water it or give it whatever other care it may need. This is especially important in larger tents, where plants in the back may be difficult to reach.

You also want to leave enough space for any equipment you may need. This could include grow lights, filters, fans, humidifiers to increase relative humidity, dehumidifiers to decrease it, air conditioning or heating. Some of these things can obviously be mounted above the plants. Just make sure that there is space somewhere in the tent for everything you need.

Another thing to consider is tent suck. This refers to the sucking inward of the tent walls due to your ventilation system creating negative pressure in the tent. The result is less space inside the tent, since the walls cave inward.

Make sure you take tent suck into account when deciding how many plants to put in the tent. A 5×5 will not actually be 5×5, due to the walls sucking inward and reducing the area inside the tent.

Alternatively, you can do something to avoid tent suck, like using some type of support beams to hold the canvas walls in place and keep them from sucking inward. Or you could use an intake fan to offset the strength of the exhaust fan.

Given all these issues, you may wonder if you need a grow tent at all for your indoor marijuana grow. Well, you don’t. But grow tents do tend to make things a lot easier. For most, they are well worth the extra cost and effort.

How Many Plants In A Grow Tent: Final Thoughts

The main takeaway here is this: the question of how many plants you can fit into a specific size grow tent is impossible to answer. You would first need to know how big the plants will be. And that is something over which you, as the grower, have total control.

This means your first decision will need to be how large you want to allow your plants to get. Once you know that, you will be able to figure out exactly how many of them you can fit into your grow tent, or how big a grow tent you will need to be able to grow a specific number of plants.

If you have the opposite problem—you can only grow a specific number of plants and you need to figure out how large a tent you need—check out our article “What Size Grow Tent Do I Need For X Plants?“