MadSci Network: Botany |
Distilled water should contain no mineral nutrients, so it would not provide any missing nutrients. Plants irrigated with a fertilizer solution should grow better than plants irrigated with distilled water. Plants provided just distilled water and no fertilizer might have yellowing leaves, dead shoot tips or leaf edges, and be much smaller than normal. All those are symptoms of mineral nutrient deficiencies. If you had a very fertile soil, then plants irrigated with distilled water might grow as well as plants irrigated with a fertilizer solution. That would be because the fertile soil has sufficient amounts of mineral nutrients for optimal plant growth. If your tap water had toxic levels of boron or sodium, then distilled water might give you better plant growth than tap water. Carbonated water would probably not contain any missing mineral nutrients either, unless it was a naturally carbonated mineral water that contained some essential mineral nutrients. Plants require fourteen essential mineral nutrients - nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, calcium, sulfur, iron, manganese, copper, zinc, boron, chlorine, molybdenum and nickel. Some plants also require or benefit from sodium, cobalt and silicon. Plant scientists who study mineral nutrient requirements of plants usually start with distilled water and then add back all but one of the essential mineral nutrients. Then they can see what a deficiency of a single mineral nutrient does to a plant. They grow plants without soil with their roots in a mineral nutrient solution. This technique is termed solution culture or hydroponics. Reference Re: How to do a hydroponics project?
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