Hardy Tropicals UK

I need to buy either a heat pad or an electric prop for my potential seedlings, what are the pros and cons of each option? Also, this may be a silly question but can the heat pads (reptile ones) cope with getting wet???

Darran, the reptile heatmats are laminated and can take some water on them.

Personaly I would go for a Prop for seeds rather than a mat. I find the mat better for cuttings and tubers.

Some may disagree.

hmmmm.....i have a small electric prop but that has run out of space so I had better buy another....I prefer to take cuttings and start off rhizomes, etc rather than sow seeds so I think a heat pad is a must too!!!!!!

Darran, there was a thread on this subject a while back. Here it is

Andy - once again, thanks for the link, pretty much answers most of my questions! Somehow, I totally missed that thread!

Pete - any updates of how your heatmat is performing?

Darran - I'm very pleased with it's performance. The main purpose I bought it for was to try and grow some banana's from seed, but I'll be leaving that until Summer, because at the moment, I'm stuffing all the Spring sowing stuff in there! It's been great for lots of tropical seeds that need higher than room temperature to germinate, and you can also vary the conditions a lot with propagator lids etc. Some of the heat mats aren't very powerful, but mine's a Bio Green heat mat, which is supposed to be one of the better one's. It's certainly been giving me good soil temps, and the seeds love it!

Thanks, take care

Pete