Up until last year I’d never used a heated propagator – I’ve always found that seeds germinate at room temperature, although they may take a little bit longer. Even pepper seeds, supposedly easier to germinate with ‘bottom heat’ came up just fine on my windowsills.

But last summer I succumbed to temptation and ordered myself a Garland Super 7 Windowsill propagator. I tried it pretty much straightaway, with the fairly predictable result that my seeds fried in the hot days with extra heat. I put it away.

I got it out again a couple of weeks ago and decided to give it a second chance during cooler weather. I sowed seven different pepper seeds in its little trays, and switched it on.

I also sowed one pepper seed in a pot, in an unheated propagator, as a control – and that’s how I know that the seeds in the propagator aren’t going to germinate. The one in the pot, the one which should take longer, came up a couple of days ago. There are no signs of plant life in the propagator trays – all it seems to have encouraged is fungus gnats, whose maggoty offspring have no doubt eaten any roots that did manage to emerge.

I had doubts as soon as I opened the propagator box. It’s a low-cost model, which means that it doesn’t have a thermostat. It’s either on, or it’s not – but it doesn’t even have an indicator light to show that it’s working. The plastic lids don’t grip onto the plastic trays, which makes it almost impossible to move the trays about without knocking the lids off. There’s no space for labels, and you’re not supposed to get the base unit wet, so you have to remove the trays to water them. I may have been able to live with all of those issues if it actually helped raised seedlings, but it doesn’t.

So my electric propagator is being cleaned up so that it can find a new home and I’m going back to the low cost, low tech and carbon neutral method of my non-electric propagators. If you really, really, really want an electric propagator then my advice would be to save your pennies long enough to buy a decent one with temperature controls.