Sign up now for your FREE Newsletter. You will receive a Newsletter twice a month providing tips, techniques, and fun projects for your garden. Sign up now
Sign up now.
This is the classified ads section of the site. Happy Shopping!
Salty Street
In a nutshell: Build a big brick wall around your yard...or grow salt-tolerant plants.
The whole story: Salt affects plants in two major ways: When toxic levels accumulate in stems and leaf buds, water is drawn out of them and desiccation—the dehydration of plant tissue—occurs. Foliage on evergreens may turn yellow or brown, and twigs and buds on deciduous plants often die. Salt can also accumulate in the soil. Excess accumulations impair the roots' ability to absorb water and nutrients, so that plants experience drought even when moisture is present.
Figure out which parts of your yard are affected by salty runoff and spray from passing cars. In general, spray from fast-moving cars or busy streets can shower an area up to 60 feet from the road. On streets with lower speed limits or less traffic, the spray area is usually within 30 feet.
Some plants are more sensitive to salt than others, so it's important to plant salt-tolerant plants in spray areas. Horse chestnut, English oak, hybrid poplars, and Colorado blue spruce all have high salt tolerance, notes Margaret Hagen, director of the family, home, and garden education center at the University of New Hampshire Extension. Rugosa roses and currants (Ribes spp.) also handle salt well. Salt decreases the cold-hardiness of exposed stems, so in the spray zone, grow only plants that are very hardy.
Lawns that lie within the spray zone often die back, because most turfgrass is sensitive to salt. Unfortunately, crabgrass isn't, and it often seizes the opportunity to move into the bare areas. Hagen recommends growing fine fescues and perennial ryegrass, which are more salt-tolerant than other turfgrasses, in salt-spray areas.
Spring rains help remove the salt that accumulates in your soil dur-ing winter by leaching it past plants' root zones. "If you have a dry spring, you can turn on a sprinkler for 4 to 6 hours for a few days and achieve the same effect," says Hagen. On mild winter days, you can also wash salt spray off your plants with a hose.
