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The Top 10 Most Poisonous Plants You Might Grow (but hey, "they're natural") · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello there and welcome to Hydroponics Daily, the go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I am your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, the founder of Utrema Ltd,
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  and this is the last episode of 2025.
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  I have managed to complete a podcast every single day of 2025.
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  Most of the time I've not batch recorded them. I am batch recording this one
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  because I am currently on holiday in Turkey,
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  and last time i went to turkey i wasn't
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  the wikipedia didn't even work the wikipedia
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  was banned heaven forbid people should have access to wikipedia so
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  i didn't know if any of the podcast software
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  websites i use would actually be working when i
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  went on holiday so i had to batch record them all of this but normally
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  i did one every single day which was hard sometimes sometimes i'd
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  get home about 11 o'clock and quickly rush one out other times
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  i'd have plenty of time to research them so thank you very much if you've listened
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  to any of the podcasts and if you've listened to all 365 you deserve a medal
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  and at least a pint of wine as the football manager Sam Allardyce would drink
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  and thank you very much for your continued support.
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  Today I wanted to cover a topic often discussed in
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  hydroponics and especially in the legal cannabis sector
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  if you know it's natural when people
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  say so something's natural or it's it's extracted
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  from plants therefore it's fine and you know
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  people could get confused between organic natural and safe you know if it comes
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  from a plant it must be safe and that's obviously not true and any drug whether
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  it's cannabis or not whether it's hemp any any any drug that works has side
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  effects. If it doesn't have side effects, then it doesn't work.
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  That is the truth. And because you want to have a biological effect on a human,
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  then it's going to have negative side effects in some people.
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  So there are lots of plants that are highly poisonous.
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  And even though they're natural, it would be stupid. It would be foolhardy. It would be dangerous.
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  It would be illegal to put into food or even put onto a crop so you couldn't make a biopesticide,
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  an organic biopesticide out of many crops you
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  can't spray for example tobacco extract
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  on plants because or or burn tobacco
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  in a greenhouse to kill pests because it's not classed as organic because it's
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  not safe you couldn't make a biopesticide out of any of the ingredients any
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  of the plants i'm going to talk about today because they would be too toxic
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  to the humans that would consume the crop i'm going to list the 10 most toxic
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  plants that are grown in a garden.
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  Or found in a garden and these are
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  ridiculously poisonous they are natural and
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  they are grown and you need to be careful if you come across
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  them they're mostly ornamental plants as you would imagine none of
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  them are food plants apart from one and i'll
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  explain that one so i've asked chat gpt
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  to rank them and obviously as it always says at the bottom in
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  gray letters very small chachi bee can make mistakes check
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  important info and as i am a plant scientist a
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  trained plant scientist i know that the information is correct so number
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  10 is hemlock specifically poison hemlock conium maculatum it's very poisonous
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  it's widely naturalized as well and invasive and can show up as a garden edge
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  weed so poison hemlock is is very common throughout.
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  I think europe let's have a look
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  at it it looks a bit like it's in
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  the carrot family and so it can get confused with
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  many of those type of plants giant hogweed is another plant in that family which
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  is extremely poisonous and the the danger of giant hogweed is kids can pick
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  it in the summer and use it as like pea shooters or as pretend telescopes,
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  pirate telescopes, and it reacts with UV light and it causes these massive blisters
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  that people believe can turn carcinogenic as well.
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  And if you get it in your windpipe and you, if you suck on it and try to use
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  it as a pea shooter, it can block your windpipe and you can suffocate to death.
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  And if you get it on your eye, you can, you go blind.
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  So that's a really, they're two really poisonous plants.
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  Deadly nightshade, as the name implies atropa belladonna
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  highly toxic berries and foliage occasionally grown
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  as a curiosity i think it can be found as a weed as
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  well belladonna because it used to be used by the
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  greeks i believe to put in the eyes of women to make them
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  dilate so that they would look like they were romantically interested
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  in people they were looking at but definitely not
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  recommended for that they're a very common number
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  eight a very common plant i've grown it in in a research institute east morling
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  down in kent rugmancia angel trumpet it contains alkaloids just like deadly
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  nightshade it's in the tomato family in the nightshade family they all contain
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  alkaloids never eat the green tissue in a tomato.
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  Because they contain poisonous alkaloids, but the angel trumpet,
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  the brugmancia, all the species in there, they're popular ornamentals.
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  Every single part of the plant is poisonous, including the roots.
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  Okay. Not just the flowers, they're beautiful flowers, but extremely poisonous
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  and do not grow that around kids.
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  Number seven is probably should be higher up on the list and that's monk's hood or wolf's bane.
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  Aconitum napellus, highly toxic, beautiful
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  flowers and called a monk's hood because the shape of
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  the flower looks like a monk's hood i remember a story
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  once of some burglars stole
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  the plants from a nursery and they broke into
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  a shed stole the plants inside the shed that was locked up or
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  the greenhouse that was locked because they thought they must be the most valuable ones there
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  was all security around them not realizing that there was security
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  because they were so poisonous and they stole them and
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  then they had to have a release on the bbc local news
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  saying if you stole these plants you better return them because they
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  are extremely poisonous so there you go and number
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  six is you the ewe tree taxis paquetta
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  and other species they contain the tax taxine
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  alkaloids they're common as a hedge tree very dangerous
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  if eaten and the taxis no tax taxol chemical is in them and they that's used
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  as a chemotherapy drug and we all know that chemotherapy drugs have side effects
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  and they are toxic to humans in high doses, and so yew trees, for example.
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  Yellow oleander. Oleander, extremely poisonous seeds cultivated in warmer regions,
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  especially parts of Australia, California.
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  I once heard of a man whose wife
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  was being very kind to him and offering a cup of tea
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  while he was in the garden and she made him tea but she
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  didn't stir the milk and so he
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  just broke off a twig from a shrub next
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  to him stirred his tree and promptly died because
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  there was enough toxin released from the oleander stem
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  to to kill him
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  so there you go so oleander pink oleander or
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  yellow oleander they're both five and six nerium oleander
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  highly toxic carcinogenic glycosides so
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  to grow and grow as a pot plant in the uk so there
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  you go number three is a food crop it's castor
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  bean or castor oil plant and you
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  extract the oil from the bean and doesn't contain any of
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  this the ricin the the toxin that
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  is often cited as a potential chemical weapon
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  and terrorists i've tried to use it as a
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  chemical weapon and release it luckily to no
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  degree of success but castor bean plant
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  is used in ornamental settings throughout
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  the uk as a center piece for
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  bedding displays by many count local councils use it in their bedding displays
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  and luckily it doesn't produce enough ricin when grown in the uk and but is
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  a potentially very very toxic natural plant natural ingredient so ricin.
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  So my number two is another
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  type of hemlock hemlock water dropwort or
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  dead man's fingers among the uk's
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  most poisonous plants the roots are especially dangerous
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  it grows along waterways and this is
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  a plant that is fitting for any horror movie because you don't just die you
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  die with a smile on your face because it contracts the muscles in your face
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  and makes you smile as you are being poisoned to death.
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  Sounds horrific. Described as a sardonic grin by people who have seen people who are dead.
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  There are no pictures online of people who have died by this because it would
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  be a GDPR disaster, but there might be one.
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  I think there's a picture of one person on Wikipedia who has died.
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  From eating it the rictus grin oh blimey
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  doesn't look good yeah so yeah
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  poor guy poor guy he's there and then
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  number two is water hemlock you'll find
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  that a lot of these are in the same plant
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  families the the nightshade family
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  and the carrot family water hemlock
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  number one most toxic plant grown
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  in a green garden or found in a garden no
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  you don't you don't smile when you have this one you get
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  lethal convulse fulsions so you
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  convulse to death whilst being poisoned so that
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  sounds absolutely horrific described what's
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  hemlock described as the most toxic indigenous plant in
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  north america and often a wet area weed
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  so completely natural but you
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  will convulse to death if you eat it not an ornamental but
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  probably the most poisonous ornamental one would be
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  castor oil plant or castor bean followed by
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  oleander and then i'd probably say monk's hood
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  probably number two for me and then
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  um deadly nightshade and brugmansia the
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  plants from the tomato family and the well
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  pepper family potato family all those potatoes if
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  you eat the green part of potato it's poisonous if you green the leaves of green
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  leaves of potato it's poisonous if you eat the green part of a tomato it's poisonous.
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  But not green tomatoes the fruit themselves when they're ripe other poisonous.
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  Plants that of note rhubarb obviously in the uk we eat a lot of rhubarb and
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  we grow a lot of rhubarb even out of the soil hydroponically.
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  And if you eat leaves of them, you get diarrhea.
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  And if you eat wild rhubarb or a lot of rhubarb roots, you can actually diarrhea
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  yourself to death. And that is a thing.
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  And that's another horrible way to go. So you could diarrhea yourself to death.
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  You could convulse yourself to death with water hemlock, or you
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  could smile yourself to death with dead man's fingers
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  or water drop wort if you go along the canals
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  of the uk and the rivers of the uk so some horrific plants there that you probably
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  don't want to be growing hydroponically well maybe you do maybe maybe there
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  are some interesting plants there you can have for your poison garden there
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  are a number of poison gardens around the world and of the ones that i think
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  you could probably grow hydroponically.
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  Angel's trumpet brugmancia that's an ornamental plant that you can sell monk's
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  hood you can sell that as to probably to more to specialist growers enthusiasts
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  but brookmansias people buy that the general public will buy that one and everything
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  else in that is castor bean castor oil plants very common and bedding plants
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  could be grown hydroponically.
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  Obviously you need to be careful not to the castor
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  bean plants the ricin to consume it you would have to aerosolize
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  it and get it into your lungs which is very very difficult if
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  you're growing a small plant you'd have to get the beans and do that so don't worry
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  about that the main concern is i would say is brugmancia
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  because it's wide widely grown people look
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  so beautiful that the general public would buy it and it's
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  any part of the plant is poisonous so you don't need to worry about that other plants
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  like foxgloves they contain digital digitalin
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  which is a drug and is used in for a
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  lot of heart medicine to slow the heart down and obviously if
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  you eat foxgloves wild foxgloves then your heart will
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  slow down to the point where you die and foxgloves
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  are very poisonous and they are in my garden for next
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  year i'm growing 200 foxglove plants for a display of biennials with spikes
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  i've got a garden just for spot plants with floral spikes i think that's going
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  to look amazing it looks like a potato field at the moment but i'm going to
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  put a big spherical fountain in so in 2026 it's going to look amazing and it's new year's eve today.
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  Apparently i've batch recorded these but it is new year's eve so happy
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  new year everybody i hope you have a fantastic 2026 i'll
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  see you on the other side with more podcasts not every day
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  like this year but hopefully all killer
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  no filler thank you very much for listening leave us
• 13:20
  an podcast review if you're bored on new year's eve make sure
• 13:23
  you click follow so you don't miss an episode and if you're really bored check
• 13:26
  out utreema.co.uk for amazing unique fertilizers biostimulants and biopesticides
• 13:32
  you won't find anywhere else we don't white label for anyone else and all our
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  technology is completely unique we don't copy anyone else and we have amazing
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  plant scientists and biochemists that manufacture the products okay thank you
• 13:42
  very much for listening and i'll see you again next year.