Before I get into the nuts and bolts of this review I want to give you my overall point of view about this Grow Tent kit.
I highly recommend the Mars Hydro TS 1000 Grow Tent Kit for anyone looking to get into growing cannabis. It is exceptionally well made and comes with nearly all the additional accessories every grower needs. This is an excellent setup, especially if you are a new grower.
OK, now on to the details of why I like this product so much.
When it comes to growing weed, pot, cannabis, marijuana, or whatever you want to call it, one of the most important decisions you need to make is: Where am I going to grow it?
For the sake of this review, I’m going to assume you are growing indoors.
Without a doubt, one off the biggest advantages of growing indoors if that you get to control everything: the light, the air, the temperature, the water, the fertilizer, the growing medium, and the location.
Unlike growing outdoors where many of your essential needs are provided by mother nature, when you grow indoors you are mother nature. You even control when they flower and when they will be ready for harvest.
Of course, growing indoors takes substantially more hardware and equipment than growing outdoors. That brings me the reason we’re here today, When creating your indoor grow location, why make several purchases, from several locations, when you can get everything you need in one convenient kit designed to do exactly what you want to do: grow cannabis.
What Does the Mars Hydro TS1000 Grow Kit NOT Contain?
In the Mars Hydro TS1000 Indoor Tent Kit. you get almost everything you need to grow one plant (your choice of strain). This will roughly yield 3 to 4 ounces of high-quality buds for smoking, plus plenty of green leaves and shake for juicing or making concentrates, tinctures, edibles, or topicals.
There’s no need to search the internet or drive all over town for the things you need when you can buy nearly everything you need in one place and have it all delivered in one box. Easy Peasy.
I say it has almost everything you need. The grow kit does NOT contain the cannabis seeds or clones you will grow or the soil you will grow it in. You will also need to get soil and nutrients. Those are only things you will need to source elsewhere. .
If you like the the idea of the kit and want to set one up for yourself, I have created a video showing you how to put it all together (see above).
Let’s look at what is in the Mars Hydro TS1000 Grow Kit Box
This box packs in a lot of stuff, let’s go over it before getting into how all the pieces come together.
- Grow Tent – This is pretty much where all the action happens.
- Grow Light -Mars 1000 grow light – There is a ton of info on this light on the internet. I know you don’t have time to research. No worries, I have already done the research for you so you don’t have to. This is a quality, well reviewed LED light.
- Environmental and odor control systems: Air filter, fan, and fan controller.
- Accessories: Temperature/humidity gauge, ratchet hangers, nylon straps, aluminum ducting, hose clamps, timer, and grow bags.
The Mars Hydro 28”x28”x64”Tent
Let’s start with the tent because we need someplace to put all this stuff.
Below is one pic of the closed tent and the other is of the tent with all of the products provided in the kit installed.
The tent itself is well made. It comes with an easy to assemble all-metal frame (no plastic) and easy to follow instructions for assembly. It can be put together in less than 15 minutes without any tools. I show you how in the video above.
Other things I like about this tent is the double layer lining to eliminate unwanted light from entering or exiting the tent. It also has a highly reflective mylar interior to maximize the use of the light inside the tent.
The tent is made with a heavy-duty SBS zipper and 2 metal cross braces for hanging your light and air filter.
What’s in the Tent?
Inside the tent, there are 3 vents across the bottom that are opened from the outside whenever you might need extra airflow inside the tent.
Also inside you will find several openings to run your electrical cords and water lines in and out of the tent, or for extra fans and ventilation. (You will only nee water lines if you choose to grow hydroponically.)
In my opinion, there are too many openings for this small sized tent, but this is not a problem as they all can be easily closed with the included drawstrings.
I really appreciate the extra thought they put into little details that can make a grower’s life easier.
For instance, when you unzip the door it to get inside they have included an extra strap to tie the door open instead of just letting it hang loose. They also include a removable bottom tray to catch extra leaves, soil, or water, which makes clean-up chores a breeze.
The Cannabis Grow Tent Environment
Once the tent is built it’s time to put all the other included parts inside. These will help keep the inside environment at the proper temperature and humidity so that your plant thrives.
They also work to control odor. You won’t want nosey people wondering “what’s that skunky smell coming for their garage” (or whatever location you place the tent).
Proper airflow is critical to your plant’s health. The included 200cfm fan and air filter will exchange the air in this small tent 5 to 7 times per minute. That’s more than enough to keep fresh air inside the tent. When attached to the air filter you can rest assured no one will smell your buds.
There are many configurations for installing fans and filters and I choose to hang these from one of the crossbars included.
The Mars Hydro TS1000 kit does have an extra set of ratchet hangers and fabric straps for hanging the fan assembly. However I found that the ratchet hangers don’t really attach easily to the fan or the filter.
I have to admit, at first I was a little pissed off at this missed detail and racked my brain on what to do. Zip ties to the rescue!
These inexpensive little gems have saved my butt many times. For about a buck, (actually I had the ties already but they can be picked up at the dollar store or almost anywhere) I had the two ties I needed for the fan and I used the fabric straps to hold the filter.
It wasn’t hard getting the carbon air filter and exhaust fan in the tent. To see how I got everything to fit, watch the How to Setup the Mars Hydro TS1000 Tent Kit video at the top of this page.
I ran the power cord out of the hole on the top of the tent to the fan speed controller outside the tent.
In addition to not having zip ties, there is no fan included in the kit for circulating the air inside the tent. While not a show stopper, you will probably need to purchase a small fan that can be clipped to one the metal tent poles inside to keep the air inside circulating to reduce humidity.
Using one of the handy zip ties, I also mounted the temperature/humidity gauge to a tent pole.
Mars Hydro TS 1000 LED Grow Light
This is the guiding light, if you will, of your grow.
As previously said, I have countless hours of research into the perfect light for a new grower and I choose this one. There are dozens of reviews of this light and all its attributes on the net, and for many, it’s really boring stuff (me included). Do you really care what the light footprint is or the average umol/i or the grams per watt or any other technical aspects of this light? Probably not. You just want to know if it will grow top-shelf weed. I did the research and I assure you it will.
That said, I will go into why I think this particular light will be perfect for you.
- It’s an LED light that uses cutting edge grow LEDs to insure it mimics sunlight.
- As an LED it uses far less electricity and is lighter in weight than most other older style grow lights.
- It has a dimmer so you don’t need to use the full wattage (saving you money) during the early stages of growth.
- The power supply is detachable so you can place it outside the tent if you need to. It’s not necessary in our case so don’t worry about it.
- The light can be connected to other lights via the ethernet cable. Again this is not something we’ll do here but if/when you get a larger tent, you can daisy chain multiple lights together for greater efficiency.
Using the included ratchet hangers I attached the LED to the 2nd crossbar, and then ran the LED power cord through the roof vent to my power supply.
In the pic above, note how I zip tied the temperature/humidity gauge to the tent pole.
Now you’re set and ready to grow. Well not quite ready, you still need soil and a plant. Future articles will show you what that entails and how to grow what you’ve got.
Mars Hydro TS 1000 LED Grow Light PAR Meter Test Results
In addition to taking a good look at the light and how it is built, we used a PAR meter to compare some popular LED light brands. Not surprisingly, our results were somewhat different than what the manufacturers claim.
If you don’t know what a PAR meter is, read this page in its entirety and you will become an expert on the topic of using LED lights to grow cannabis. But for those who want to get straight to the point, the chart below is what we found (by the way, sign up here to be alerted when we add new brands and LED grow lights to the chart, as we do so frequently.
Using a PAR meter inside of a 2×2 tent (perfect for small home grows), we checked the amount of light falling at 17 different locations within the tent. The chart below shows how much light the PAR meter detected from each light at 12, 18, and 24 inches above the meter.
To see how this light compared to other similar lights, see our LED Grow Light feature.
Final Thoughts
At a cost of about $320, the Mars Hydro 1000 Tent Kit is for anyone looking to “grow their own”. It’s only about 2 foot wide, making it small enough to place almost anywhere such as a closet or corner of the garage. With the included Mars Hydro TS 1000 LED Grow Light it has enough light to grow top shelf, dispensary quality cannabis.
The people at Mars Hydro thought of (almost) everything necessary to accomplish this. The only drawbacks are are an easy fix with a couple of zip ties. And there’s no circulation fan included.
The only drawback is there are no instructions included for putting the whole tent, and included equipment, together. But have no fear, that’s why I’m here. In an upcoming video, I will show you, step by step, how to put it all together, plus I’m always here to answer any questions you may have about this product or growing needs.
To begin the “grow your own” process you can purchase the Mars Hydro TS1000 Grow Tent kit here.
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You mention growing 3 to 4 ounces, etc but don’t mention a time interval for that. Is that per month, 60 days, 90 days? Thanks.
For a successful one plant grow you can expect this amount per harvest. The time to harvest depends on the strain you are growing. It can be 3 to 4 months. You should be able to harvest this amount 3 to 4 times a year if you grow all the time. If you are looking to harvest more and not grow all the time, I suggest a larger growing 2 – 4 plants twice per year. But to do this you will need a bigger tent and light.
Hi Joan, it really depends on what you’re growing as different strains grow at different rates. For instance, an indica finishes faster than a sativa. Also because of the small space, so we would begin the flowering process sooner. The average time from seed to harvest in a grow tent this size is 3 months or so. So theoretically you could harvest 3-4 times a year.
The purpose of this setup is to teach you how to grow, but once you know it, the sky’s the limit.
So, if you really like growing, you can get a bigger tent and in the same amount of time double or triple your harvest with a minimal amount of extra effort.
Thanks!