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Interesting perspective on the "Miracle homemade weed killer" that's all over Facebook (weedcontrolfreaks.com)

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[–]GrandmaGosZone 5, Illinois, USA 24ポイント25ポイント  (43子コメント)

I didn't see a single mention of the potential for permanently salinizing, and thus sterilizing, your soil through the over-use of large amounts of salt, other than a click-through link to the Wiki article on "salting the earth", almost as an afterthought, a cite, which nobody will ever click on, read, and assimilate. No cautions, just "yeah, you can use this! And it works!" None of the "One weird trick!" things ever mention that, either.

[–]ohmira 12ポイント13ポイント  (11子コメント)

I seriously can't believe that a half cup salt is recommended and salinization never comes up! Want to kill everything for generations in one swift motion? Just add salt!

[–]justinsayin5B 3ポイント4ポイント  (21子コメント)

permanently salinizing, and thus sterilizing, your soil through the over-use of large amounts of salt

I added enough salt to an asparagus patch to kill all weeds one year. The patch didn't thrive, so I ended up planting something else there 3 years later. It is now 5 years after the salting and that Gooseberry patch is as weedy as any other part of the yard.

I think the salt just washed away.

[–]SmallNuclearRNA 6ポイント7ポイント  (0子コメント)

Salt is extremely soluble, so depending on how much water it gets, how much was added and i suppose somewhat on the soil type, i'd say it's inevitable that it is washed away and things return to normal quite quickly.

There would be a problem if you were adding salt quicker than it is washing away.

[–]GrandmaGosZone 5, Illinois, USA 7ポイント8ポイント  (4子コメント)

It does eventually wash down into lower layers of the soil, but it never "goes away", because that's not a thing that sodium chloride and other salts can do. It can only move down in the soil column as far as the maximum rainfall will carry it, and then it sits there.

When you're irrigating, you run into this constantly. If you're always applying the identical amount of water to the soil, it pushes all the salts into a layer, and then eventually it ruins your soil permanently.

This is how we know that salty soils are a Bad Thing--irrigation results for the last 3,000 years.

http://www.jswconline.org/content/40/1/48.extract

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/crops/00503.html

[–]JoeLiarThe sun shiny shores of the Salish Sea 9b 2ポイント3ポイント  (2子コメント)

If by "going away" you mean disappear completely such that every molecule and ion is no longer there, well you would be correct. However, salts do wash away and enter the water table. There is, undoubtedly, a quantity of salt already in your water table. A good chunk of North America was under sea water a few millennia back.

The references you give are with respect to continually and daily adding salt to the soil, faster than it can be washed away. This is not the case with spraying a half a cup of salt once or twice a season.

[–]GrandmaGosZone 5, Illinois, USA 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

But my point is that the Pinterest brigade sometimes don't stop with "once or twice a season". They get out there every time they fire up the grill or use the pool, and stroll around the yard with more salt water, spraying the dandelions. Buzzfeed infographics rarely include sensible precautions and disclaimers. So my preference would be that the factoid simply stop being retailed far and wide on the Internet. It's useless, I know, but I can dream.

Also, in arid climates, there isn't enough natural rainfall to move salts out of the soil and into the water table. So the image of the Tucson Pinterest brigade sauntering around their back yard, saltwater-and-vinegar sprayer in their hand, is not a happy one.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-170-98/pdf/fs17098.pdf

[–]JoeLiarThe sun shiny shores of the Salish Sea 9b 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Point taken. Wouldn't work well on dandelions unless you doused it. This is mostly a leaf poison, and dandelions have a long deep nasty root.

[–]justinsayin5B 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

So there is a point where the water can continue down to the place it lives underground, but the dissolved salt particles must be filtered out and remain in the soil. That makes sense, because well water from a deep enough source is never dirty or salted.

[–]ohmira -1ポイント0ポイント  (14子コメント)

Just because the salt is no longer your problem, doesn't mean its not a problem.

[–]justinsayin5B 2ポイント3ポイント  (13子コメント)

How's that?

[–]ohmira -5ポイント-4ポイント  (12子コメント)

How's what? This is common sense.

[–]JoeLiarThe sun shiny shores of the Salish Sea 9b 4ポイント5ポイント  (11子コメント)

Commons sense means you know something and you think that every one else knows it too. Please elucidate all such "common sense" answers. It might not be as common as you think.

p.s. Salt is not poisonous and is highly soluble. It washes away with your first watering.

[–]Guygan[S] -2ポイント-1ポイント  (10子コメント)

Salt is not poisonous

Your doctor would like to have a word with you....

6 ounces of table salt will KILL a 200lb person.

[–]fatmaple 6ポイント7ポイント  (5子コメント)

The Romans salted the fields of their most hated enemies because they wanted to help them reduce weeding....

[–]justinsayin5B 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

No, but having one year of failed crop followed by a second year of poor crop would have helped ruin most states. By the time several years went by, the fields would return to normal. That is unless the Romans were carting in enough salt to pile it up inches high on every field.

[–]fatmaple -2ポイント-1ポイント  (2子コメント)

Exactly, so I'll just go back to weeding the old fashioned way rather than subject my garden to sub optimal conditions because I'm too lazy to weed.

[–]JoeLiarThe sun shiny shores of the Salish Sea 9b 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

A myth.

There is no evidence that sufficient amounts of salt were used to render large tracts of land unusable.

[–]JoeLiarThe sun shiny shores of the Salish Sea 9b 0ポイント1ポイント  (3子コメント)

And yet I will eat that amount over the course of a few months, and yet survive. I am truly amazing.

[–]Guygan[S] 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

And I can use glyphosate in my yard and garden, and yet survive.

I guess we're both amazing!

[–]JoeLiarThe sun shiny shores of the Salish Sea 9b 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

Betcha you pay more your glyphosate than I pay for my salt and vinegar.

[–]MatticusVP 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

The exception would be if you continually spray salt in the same area, you can end up with too much salt in the soil, and that will damage nearly all plants.

[–]GrandmaGosZone 5, Illinois, USA 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Ah. Thank you for pointing that out, I did miss it. But then, it kinda proves my point, that not enough emphasis is given to the potential for doing drastic and irremediable damage to your soil.

And it's buried in a paragraph the topic sentence of which has to do with the contact herbicidal nature of salt-vinegar-soap, and then this random unconnected factoid about soil salinization goes past really fast. No wonder I didn't see it. It really ought to be in a paragraph by itself.

Also, it doesn't necessarily require only spraying it in the same place--a single dose of enough salt will do it.

[–]DerZauberlehrling 3ポイント4ポイント  (4子コメント)

Why even garden if you just want to blast everything with chemicals? I learn a lot from having to battle weeds and leave most of them alone if they aren't competing with my plants so the bees have more fodder. Mulching + physically removing weeds is far more effective anyway.

[–]JoeLiarThe sun shiny shores of the Salish Sea 9b 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Mulching and pulling the blackberry just encourages it. Small tactical nuclear weapons are clearly called for.

[–]goldandguns 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

chemicals

God I hate this shit. You know your plants are chemicals, right? You are chemicals. Water is a chemical. Everything is chemicals.

I use all kinds of shit. I just find growing my own to be rewarding. It has nothing to do with being organic.

[–]Guygan[S] 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Why even garden if you just want to blast everything with chemicals?

Straw man. No one said anything about "blasting everything".

[–]graffiti81 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

GLHF with that asiatic bittersweet.

[–]crankypants15US zone 5a 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

To be fair I put table salt in the cracks of my driveway. It only works for less than a year, and I have to reapply it every spring, and the runoff from rains (which we get a lot of from March 1 to Jun 30) doesn't seem to bother the grass on the edge of the driveway at all.

The question becomes "How much salt do you put in a small area until that area is sterilized?" and "How long will an area of earth be deadly for plants?"

This would all depend a lot on your rainfall, and the ability of the salt to trickle deeper into the earth, away from surface plants. Salt is water soluble and washes away with rains or enough water.

[–]GrandmaGosZone 5, Illinois, USA 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

That's true, but sometimes the Pinterest Crowd don't understand how much is too much, and instead apply the concept of "If some is good, then more is better", and then they wonder why they can't get flowers to grow in that border. Well, last summer they doused it repeatedly with a highly concentrated salt solution (because if some salt is good, more salt is better), and now it's dead.