With winter comes snow and ice and with that comes salt that can damage your lawn and landscape plants. While we don’t deal with these types of challenges in Texas often, snow, ice, and salt are a part of winter life for all but the most southern states. Salt damage to a yard comes from two places – salt trucks keeping the roads clear and salt based ice-melt homeowners use on sidewalks and driveways. While salt helps keep roads safe for drivers and your sidewalk from getting too slippery, salt also poses a risk to your lawn and landscaping. Though it is well-nigh impossible to keep salt from affecting your yard, there are some steps you can take to prevent and repair damage.
Prevention
It is hard to prevent salt damage from commercial salt used on roads and streets, but there are some steps you can take to help protect your yard. To protect landscape plants, keep your garden beds away from roads and driveways that might be salted, or grow more salt-tolerant plants closer to the road.
Another way to protect your yard is to use salt-free ice-melt products around your home. Products like Safe Paw are unlikely to damage plants. Products containing potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride do not burn plants as badly.
Lawns are harder to protect because they are at greater risk for being exposed to salt from roadways. One solution is to plant salt-tolerant varieties of grass. Kentucky bluegrass, a popular turf grass in the Midwest, has a low tolerance for salt. It is often mixed with ryegrass to increase traffic resistance, and this will also help it it resist salt damage. Other varieties of cool-season grass that have a high tolerance for salt are tall fescue, red fescue, and alkaligrass. Alkaligrass, particularly the ‘Fults’ variety, has the highest tolerance for salt and mixes well with other turf grasses.
Repairing Damage
Not all salt damage can be prevented. When salt affects your lawn or garden, the pH of the soil is raised. Lowering the pH of soil is difficult, so if your lawn is exposed to a lot of salt, your best bet is to grow some of the salt-tolerant grasses mentioned above. Compost will naturally balance soil pH, but it works slowly. Here are some other tips for amending soil with a high pH.
Another way to combat salt damage is with several heavy waterings in the spring to wash the salt away and let is disperse into the soil. If any grass has been killed by the salt, replant with a more salt-tolerant variety. Early fall is the recommended time to plant grass seed, but if you can supply enough water, grass can be planted in the spring to give it a head-start before facing winter salt damage.
Winter can be tough on your lawn and landscape plants, but with some planning and care, you can help your lawn and gardens survive the winter without succumbing to salt damage. Preventative measures, coupled with attention to water and composting, will help keep you maintain a healthy lawn even after an encounter with winter salt.
