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Guttation: What the deuce?! · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hi, today on Hydroponics Daily we're talking about a phenomenon called guttation
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  and guttation is when water droplets magically appear on the edge, the margin of your leaf.
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  So we call the edge of a leaf the margin, the end of the leaf is the leaf tip
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  and if you're going to get guttation that's where it's going to occur.
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  So what happens is normally in plants there
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  is a negative pressure pulling the sap
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  up the xylem from the roots to provide water to the
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  leaves and bringing minerals with it and
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  root hormones and things like this and that occurs because
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  water is evaporating from the leaves through the stomatal pores.
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  And where that's dragging through osmotic
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  pressure the xylem sap water up
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  with it to replace it however early in
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  the morning or when the humidity is close
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  to 100% then you're not going to get this evaporation and
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  some plants especially tropical plants house plants they
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  will force the xylem sap
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  up something called root pressure now obviously
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  that's not a passive process that requires energy and
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  so plants don't do this standardly they only do it
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  when they need to get water up maybe they're going to suffer
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  from nutrient deficiency if they don't get the water up
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  to the leaves so they can they can use some energy from the roots
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  to push the water drops by root pressure and
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  if they push enough up that it's not being replaced by evaporation then
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  the water will come out of the
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  stomata and out of the pores in the leaves especially where
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  the veins meet the margin and the leaf tip and you'll get these water droplets
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  so they're nothing to worry about on their own they could be a sign that humidity
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  is too high in your grow room or your greenhouse or simply that it's early in
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  the morning they're not to be mistaken for things like honeydew.
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  Which is the excretions from aphids and other insects that are pests.
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  So don't go, oh God, I've got insects and start spraying insecticides everywhere
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  just because you've got liquid forming from your leaves.
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  They've been experimented with guttation as a way of getting active ingredients
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  out of plants, like genetically modified plants.
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  You could extract active ingredients out of the super pure sap if you could cause them to form.
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  Gutation i'm not scientifically sure whether gutation is
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  released is related to resin production and you know resin exudation from flower
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  buds and things like this but i would imagine the mechanism is probably fairly
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  similar they're not going to be full of sugars these it's going to be a very
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  watery solution so that's been hydroponics daily for today gutation if you've
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  got any interesting facts about gutation drop a comment below.