For your plants’ sake, go easy on the salt

Removing ice from roads and walkways in winter might be essential for safety, but salt can be damaging to plants and soil.

Salt has the same effect on plant roots as salty potato chips do on your lips: It draws water from living cells. Salt can ruin soil structure so it wads up into an airless mass. Not a nice place for plants to grow.

And damage from winter salt is sneaky, not manifesting itself until spring or later. Then, new leaves might emerge pale green or yellow or, later in the season, leaves may look scorched or turn their autumn colors early. Stems might die back or be stunted.

Older plants can sometimes recover from salt injury, especially if spring and summer rains are abundant.

MITIGATE DAMAGE

Using less salt can help; highway studies have found that, in de-icing roads, salt was effective in smaller amounts if sprayed as a brine rather than spread as crystals. Maybe it’s time to get out that garden sprayer again.

And you can leach out much of the salt by flushing the soil beneath a prized tree or shrub in spring with water — using 1 gallon per square foot or a 2-inch depth over the course of a few hours.

ALTERNATIVES TO SALT

Alternative salts — those other than sodium chloride — are another possibility. Calcium chloride is a frequently used alternative which, besides being less damaging to plants and soils than sodium chloride, also melts ice faster and is effective at temperatures well below zero degrees Fahrenheit. Sodium chloride, in contrast, loses some of its

HONSX This undated photo shows an iced-up plant in New Paltz, NY. Winter ice can break plant and human limbs. Rock salt, which can be damaging to plants, is not the only way to clear it from paths.