The salt probably isn't helping. I'm going to guess the boulevard has trees providing some shade from the punishing heat of the sun, and perhaps gets/retains more moisture.

Anywho ... its grass ... so I'd suggest tilling it and filling the boulevard with some short garden plant, like strawberries or carrots.

 

It may be getting more water from it's proximity to the road where no water is absorbed.
And the road salt may not be NaCl salt but some other type of salt that is more plant friendly.

 

Yeah that. Rain runoff and trapped humidity escaping from the edge of the roadway betters growth there...

 

I found out this year that Epsom salt (magnesium salt) can be used to side dress plants that need the magnesium. I did the tomatoes, and a couple of small trees.

 

Actually we use diluted salt water on some of our garden and it seems to make the plants grow better.

 

In organic farming folks commonly use seaweed [which is covered with ocean salts], and once each year an application of ocean water is often recommended for some crops.

There are salts and then there are salts. Some kill plants, others, uh not so much.

 

I didn't think salt alone would kill plants or grass. But if you mx vinegar and salt it s just like round up but organic....

 

Nice to know going to try that.:thumb:

 

I was told by a really good tomato grower to put a tablespoon of Epsom salts around tomato plants when you plant them. I have been doing it for 2 years and it sure hasn't hurt them.

 

Most salts are nutritional in the right proportions, if you water your plants with seawater once every week they won't do so good. If you do it once per season they will often like it. Different type of plants also have different tolerances to salt and stuff that are bad for plants. The wilder they are, the better they often cope with different stuff that hurt your flowerbed plants.

If the ground ever get saturated with salt, there won't be much of anything growing there.

 

Lots of extra water from the road and higher levs of carbon monoxide and dioxide which plants breath. If you tested the soil during the summer you'd not find much salt. It tends to run off rapidly into streams and rivers and pollutes lakes etc.

rich

 

too much salt will definitely kill plants. I use concentrated salt water as round up for a patio. works very well. it is about as heavy as you can make it as it was pooled in a bin filled with salt from winter salting roads/drives.

I also have a spot where an employee dumped a 1 ton bag of salt on the ground. There is not a single speck of green anywhere the salt spilled for 10 months now.

 

thanks guys, alot of good info i can look up this fall and winter to see if i can help my garden and yard next year. way more actual ideas than i thought.

 

I salt the area around my asparagus, kills the grass & weeds but doesn't bother the asparagus at all.

 

Three suggestions:

1) Make sure you mulch heavily. This will make the soil bear more salts as it will retain moisture. It will also keep the weeds down. You will use less salt all around, as moist soil leeches less.

2) Use wood ash and calcium chloride instead of sodium chloride. The asparagus need the minerals, and sodium chloride is minerally rather useless. The wood ash forms potassium hydroxide when exposed to water, which is a "strong" (fully ionizing) base. Most organic compost is slightly acidic. The wood ash will react with compost and form mineral salts.

3) Use less salt. Realistically, you shouldn't be adding any salt, because it will form on its own through the building and maintenance of the soil. Too much salt may not kill the asparagus, but it will hamper the saprophytic and mycorrhizal fungi, nitrogen-moderating bacteria, and the cycle-regulating protozoa. It is these microbiotics that actually build and maintain the soil for you.

 

Rain water tends to wash away salt . . . all the way back to the ocean.

Being on the road side next to a ditch, I'm sure it got plenty.

In the case of the dead sea or the great salt lake, such places are the end game for rain and water runoff. However, the water that evaporates gets another chance to make it to the sea.

 

When we hear the word, "salt," most of us think of table salt or rock salt, like sodium chloride (NaCl). In reality, every ionic crystal is a salt. Most minerals essential to sustaining life are present either as salts, or in ionic aqueous solution (dissolved in water) which, upon drying out, leave behind those salts.

This can be a good thing, because the electrolytic properties of aqueous salt solutions are necessary to maintain turgor pressure in plant cells and for the proper functioning of the nervous system of the animals (and people) who eat those plants. Because these salts are water soluble, they must be either replenished frequently enough, or bioconcentrated in the plants that need them.

On the other hand, if rainfall is insufficient, or if the soil is prone to hold more mineral salts than plants can withstand, the accumulation of salts can not only kill a field, but render it desolate and barren for years, decades, even centuries.

Such is the case of the fields of the Hopi Indians, who did not understand crop rotation. They irrigated their fields because water was scarce, but the water they diverted dissolved salts along the way. This was a great boon for the Indians, as they didn't fertilize or rotate their crops, but the accumulation of the salts in the soils meant that they were leaving huge swathes of farmland barren. They would end up relocating their settlements every so often because of this, leaving wasteland in their wake.

So salts can be a blessing or a curse, depending on dozens of factors.

 

some plants come from a salt laiden back ground any way,

all brassicas come from the sea shore so can tolerate a higher salt content in the ground

so can certain grasses as well

 

Sodium chloride or potassium chloride will kill plants.

The road crews may be using calcium chloride or magnesium chloride is much less toxic to plants, and the calcium can actually help plants, since many soils are deficient in it.