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Gardening Area => Growing questions and answers => Topic started by: modern on December 23, 2021, 12:36:04 AM

Title: Explain water usage by plants
Post by: modern on December 23, 2021, 12:36:04 AM
Water helps uptake nutrients and is used in photosynthesis keeps plants ridged and such.

A plant in hydroponics grows well but it uptakes nutrients constantly with the water. What if a plant has nutrients in the soil but also has access to water with little to no nutrients? Would this present itself as a nutrient issues or would it just use the water it needs? Does the presence of water just allow the plant to "operate" well but wouldn't affect growth since it doesn't have "infinite access to nutes" in the water.

I want to get a better understanding of how a plant reacts to an underwater reserve of ground water or even lateral roots reaching a lake or other water source. Some roots will have access to soil/nutrients which would uptake when rain comes however what about the infinite access to the water which sure has some nutrients but wouldn't be nutrient rich. I've even seen photos of Saguaro near river/streams and wonder what that access to water means for the plant.

Edit:
After reading a bit more it seems nutrients are mainly plant dependent so lets say a plant with low nutrient requirements has access to infinite water what would the effect be any ideas?
Title: Re: Explain water usage by plants
Post by: modern on December 23, 2021, 10:46:38 PM
So after few hours researching found a paper that describes pretty closely what I was wondering...

https://bg.copernicus.org/articles/17/6377/2020/bg-17-6377-2020.pdf

pretty interesting most went over my head however what I picked up is even in the dry soil that has nutrients if water is available to the plant lower down/or sideways the water passing will be diverged to the roots in the dry areas that have nutrients and it will draw in the needed nutrients (attempt to atleast) despite it being dry where as most would think only uptake it soil is wet.