hi there my name is memo this is my channel house planty goodness and essentially it's a place where
i like to geek out about my big passion which you might be able to see behind me it's tropical
houseplants so today i want to dive into a topic that has actually been requested a lot more than
i ever thought it would be and today i want to touch on heat mats and i know some people have
seen from some of my previous videos that i've had interesting results from using hit mats in
the past so let's dive into it for those who might not know this is what a heat mat might look like
my one isn't a particularly fancy one and actually this i've got two this is the
the lower quality one in relation to the other one that i've got the other one is slightly it
feels more expensive and i think it was a tiny bit more expensive both of them i've got off of amazon
if i can remember during this video i'll also drop a link down below they've been okay as heat mats
now let's dive into a bit as to what a heat mat is what a heatman is and what it's meant to do
essentially so you plug it into the wall obviously i've got a uk plug because i'm based in the uk
and this goes underneath plants now i'll be more specific with that because i know that
people want to know what my experiences have been so having done a bit of research before
using a heat map and i might actually put this down because otherwise you're just going to
see me holding a heat map for a while and let's chat and i'll show you some examples of plants
that you should be using in a heat map and ones that you probably shouldn't be using so diving
into it a bit more so obviously that's a heat mat it's nothing particularly exciting it is
something that you plug into the wall for people who have not experienced heat mats before and i
didn't have any concept of it necessarily when i first got mine is that you would plug it in
you're going to go and try to feel it to begin with and you're going to think that it's going
to be quite hot to the touch but actually the reality is with heat mats they are meant to
replicate what it would be like in the soil on a warm sunny day and in order for you to feel heat
on your skin if for instance i know celsius i don't know what this might be in fahrenheit but
kind of an average human temperature might be 36 or 37 degrees celsius can you imagine if it was
hot to the touch it would mean that it would be kind of above 40 or even 50 degrees celsius
when have you ever seen soil being that warm essentially what it would then do is
cook the plant's roots from the inside out so it's going to be warm just slightly warmer
than kind of your skin temperature so that's the first thing to remember with that one
is when you're first getting this and i know i'm kind of talking to people that have had no
experience with heat heatmaps but you know what i really wish somebody had done a video like this
when i was first starting because i didn't have a clue and to say that some of the information
online is basic at best it's basic at best and also a lot of the times what heat mats were
meant to be is for a lot of people that do kind of outdoor gardening and it's a seed starting
kind of mechanism really and i'll come back to the seeds starting in just a minute but
so yeah so it needs to be kind of warm to the touch it will usually come up i bought
it from amazon so it came rolled up and it was kind of in a weird shape but when it
when it's got other things on top of it and when it heats up because it's plastic essentially
it will kind of open up now the one thing i will say is knowing what i know now because i went for
some of the most basic heat maps that i could get knowing what i know now there are other heat mats
that i think are meant to be for reptiles and they've got a heat sensor because this
might be something that you're putting into a reptile enclosure and there's a heat sensor
that's an interesting one that i'll come back to in just a moment when i talk about
heat mats and using propagation boxes and my opinion based on my experiences as to
whether or not i would recommend that but yeah essentially that's what it is it's a very kind of
unexciting bit of kit in terms of what it is but there is a lot of little niggly things around it
so for instance one of the questions that i first had and i'll answer this as if i was talking to
myself and trying to find this information when i was looking for this information
but one of the things i didn't know because i didn't really state it anywhere is okay it's
on now do i switch it off at any point does it need to be switched off at night i don't know
and i still i'm not 100 with that because i still didn't find an awful lot of information online i
was a bit worried because my background is more on the digital side of things but i do have a lot of
friends who are kind of electricians or electronic engineers and all these things so huh but
with this i found that switching it off at night worked for me i was a bit worried that
it might kind of damage it in some way if it's constantly being switched on and off
i was also worried it might get damaged if it's constantly on
i was trying to find things online and essentially it's a mix match of what people are saying some
people saying yeah it's absolutely fine some people say no it needs to be on all the time
because the night time temperatures otherwise will drop too much but again i'll come back to what the
original issue is with this bit of kit because it is meant for the outdoor gardener and i know
a lot of people that might be on my channel tend to be more on the houseplant side of things
with houseplants the difference that you'll get is say for instance somebody was using this maybe in
an unheated greenhouse and they would have this on all day and it'd have nice warm temperatures
but maybe the outside temperatures are cold cold at night and they plugged it off at night that
plant's soil would drop from kind of a good 30 degrees down to potentially zero and that's what
they were saying is maybe don't do that so but in a household environment as long as your room isn't
too cold that drop isn't going to be so drastic that it's going to cause too many issues but yeah
i think that was a bit more on that the thing that i would say is some of them i think do maybe come
with timers and also the one that i mentioned just a moment ago with the the temperature gauge on it
that one also does some interesting things with switching on and off essentially but let's dive
into a bit more in terms of how i've used it what my experiences have been and kind of learnings
which hopefully might help you guys when you're looking to potentially use something like this
so right off the bat i will say that the thing that i've had the most success with the heatmap
is obviously using it for what's it what it's intended to do which is a seat starter which
gives it a bit of a kickstart to get seeds going so for instance i've got some antherium metallicum
and hopefully it will focus probably not but you might be able to see let me see if i can bring it
in a bit closer and i'll hide my face there you go so you can see some of the seeds on there on
the sphagnum moss and that is good because it will give it kind of a good condition to start growing
and i've obviously got a tray of this is crystalline mixed with photarifolium and
so for instance let me give you some indication of the difference so amp theorems everything that
i was finding online for seed starting without theorems is it says obviously keep it somewhere
warm because it will give that seed enough kind of boost to get going as quickly as possible
i didn't do this i wasn't using a heat mat when i was starting these
and i saw that they took a very long time it was in the winter when i was starting
to propagate them because that's when i got the berries so i needed to use them because
if you know anything about ethereum pollination getting the berries getting the seeds they perish
relatively quickly and you need to use those seeds kind of fresh really so i didn't have an option
i did put it in prop box which was quite close to a radiator so the temperature was relatively warm
but it wasn't possibly as warm as it wanted it to be basically so i had a very i had quite a few
kind of the original i think it's cotyledons which is the first couple of leaves that come out from
most seeds and in order for me to start getting the slightly more mature leaves you can see there
with a bit of a stripe that only happened when i got it into the situation where the heat mat
underneath the propagator now the other thing i was going to say is even if you're not going
to use a propagator and i'll touch on that in a minute again make sure that if at all possible
get as much of a barrier between and let me show you get as much of a barrier as you can between
the actual heat mat and the plant itself so say for instance i was putting this on
the heat mat directly that might be a bit too warm so generally what i have done previously
when i was just putting it with plants i just made sure that there was a drip tray underneath the pot
with the plant and that gave it a bit of a barrier between the the really hot heat mat and the actual
bottom of the soil of the plant that was on it in a pot basically but let me put this back down
but let's talk a bit more about my experiences with the heat mat not for seedlings i'll come back
to seedlings with pretty much all of my plants and i got very excited with it as well and it
worked quite well for instance if somebody seen my antherium vti so my king antherium review video i
mentioned a bit more about the heat mat that did really well when i had a seedling when i bought
a relatively small aetherium vti and i put it on there because it grew quite quickly and it started
to establish more mature leaves faster flip side of that so that was a good story the flip side
of that was something like my philodendron splendid which you might be able to see here
has had root rot three or four times and i'm pretty sure it's mainly because of the heat map
with plants that are in soil and they're established plants and they're not seedlings
and they're not just plain seeds that you're hoping to sprout basically
you start getting issues and i'll show you a bit of an example this plant wasn't caused by
the heat map but essentially it's the same principle you'll start getting really leggy plants
where you'll have the growth will be so quick and it will be reaching for usually above my heat mat
i'd put some form of grow light because obviously it needs to have light not just the heat but it
starts getting really really tall but not as bushy basically and you'll get that with seeds as well
with the seedling situation and that's usually that bit of advice that you can find online
is very true i find as soon as you've seen the seedling sprout sometimes without theorems i
might let them go on for a bit longer because i've seen that it's been okay you need to stay on top
of watering but with everything that isn't a seedling or an aetherium the moment that you
see something sprout take it off the the heat map put it somewhere else it still needs its humidity
and still growing and it still might be rehabbing so rehab has been an interesting one with this
i think when i was rehabbing because that's what i was doing with the splendid it was a bit stressed
when it came to me um but it did really well for rehabbing you just need to really pay attention
because i didn't and i let it on for too long and generally the problem that i got with the splendid
is the problem that you get generally with heat mats if you've putting established plants on
is it does great it it you avoid root rot in the sense that the soil doesn't stay
moist for too long however you then run the risk of root rot because the pots and the soil in the
pot might go dry way quicker than you're expecting even if you're really paying attention to it
and the roots in the soil the soils dried out the roots have dried out you then water it as you
would normally and the roots the dry roots start rotting and it then causes root rot that way so
and also because it's then on a heat mat and root what is caused by bacteria if i'm not mistaken
that heat will also mean that that bacteria will multiply quicker so you might be kind of getting
the gist of what my suggestion would be on this is yes use it on a seedling and seeds
that maybe not on full plants for longer than a few days and by a few days i mean
two to five or maybe seven days and then take it off because you can control it a lot better then
and that was the big issue it was drying too much and just to put it in context with the splendid
i'd be checking it in the morning and it was still relatively moist with the moisture meter and all
of these things by the afternoon of the same day it was bone dry and sahara dry and normally with
most plants if they're just sitting on a shelf somewhere that won't cause their roots to dry
out too quickly but if you imagine the heat from the heat mat with dry soil and the roots it will
mean that those roots will desiccate and kind of dry out a lot faster than they would do if
they were just sitting in dry soil on the side of a shelf somewhere basically so that's the thing
to remember with that now coming back to heat mats and propagation boxes so obviously heat
maps and propagation boxes you would assume are a match made in heaven and they can be however
so with a prop box what i found is if you close the lid and you put the heat mat
on there yes the humidity will stay and it will be quite warm but that for me it felt like the
plant was pretty much like cooking and steaming from the inside out so what i've learned now with
all of my ethereum propagations the the seedlings essentially when i've got the heat mat and i've
got the prop box i don't ever fully close the lid of the prop box and obviously i've got the
led grow lights on the lid of the prop box but i always have it slightly ajar it
still gets some circulation going there's still a decent level of humidity on there
and also and this is the other thing i'm touching what i'm just speaking about a moment ago i
switched off the heat mat at night and what i also like to do at that point at night is close the lid
because it will keep in some of that heat and some of that moisture overnight but it won't continue
to heat up and cook the plants from the inside out essentially but yeah so and i learned that the
hard way i got quite a few rare plants that i was putting into a propagation box with a lid on and
they turned to soup quite quickly and the stench was insane basically there's also something to
be said about the growing media that you're using as well so for instance i've only ever tried the
heat mats with directly with plants on them in an aroid mix i've never done it with something like
pond which i've done it now i would imagine with that one it would dry out even quicker you might
want to then put a reservoir of water most heat mats are technically waterproof they're obviously
not meant to be fully submerged into water but if a few drops will go on it check with yours
obviously but it should be okay because obviously you'd imagine these things are made to have plants
sitting on them which generally the plants will be some form of moisture in their growing media but
be careful is what i want to say with this one i know there's a lot of people that want to do it
and i the people that have been here for a while know that i have very little patience which again
this is reasons why i want to try things like heat mats to see if i can speed things up a bit more
yes and no basically sometimes just having a good heat within the room that the plant
is in and it doesn't drop too much and it doesn't fluctuate too much is enough to kind of get those
plants going as i said there is something to be said about possibly rehabbing plants slightly
in on a heat mat but obviously then you need to then remember that
the plant came stress it came on the heat mat it was a slightly better condition it kind of
bolstered itself up for a few days but then you move it off the heat mat that's still going to
stress that plant to a certain degree anyway and even seedlings i've taken some of the seedlings
granted with only the cotyledon leaves and it was only one or two basically just because i wanted
to try it and i put it out in my conservatory which again the humidity level is high but not
as high as propagation box and definitely not as warm as it would have been with a heat map in it
and yeah the reality is those initial leaves are crisping up however because it was a
crystalline seedling and my crystalline is like bomb proof essentially they're bouncing
back quite quickly and they're getting new leaves growing in because they're
kind of acclimating to their environment but the point i'm trying to make is they did still wobble
and for the people that are trying this for a first time because i get a lot of comments from
everybody kind of saying oh my god it's done this blah blah blah and it's only because you've not
had the experience of years of kind of dealing with you know uh every time you change do a
drastic change to the environment of most house plants yeah they're gonna throw a bit of a wobble
and yeah they're probably gonna crisp up or maybe some yellow leaves until they then get
established again in that new environment that you've put them in but nine times out of ten
that should be fine obviously do kind of keep an eye on things but it should be fine and it should
kind of get things going and obviously what you want to avoid is situations like this where you've
got something on a mat and it turns to nothing so my opinion on heat mats great for seedlings
great for rehabbing probably not worth the risk for anything else constantly being on a heat mat
but yeah tell me if you agree in the comments down below if you've got your own experiences
with using heat maps that might be different than mine or might be the same as mine let us
know down below let's have that conversation but yeah hopefully you've enjoyed hopefully i shall
see you here soon and i truly truly hope that you have a great rest of your day thanks bye
you