Water with salt levels above 1,000 parts per million will kill many plants, including beans, cucumbers, lettuce, and tomatoes. If your well is salty, it is recommended that you use fresh water from another source such as your city's water supply to supplement irrigation.
A few more salt-tolerant plants
Other picks include Blue lyme grass (Leymus arenarius), Chinese Fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides), and 'Elijah Blue' fescue (Festuca glauca 'Elijah Blue'). But back to 'Karl Foerster'. I love the feathery plumes of this grass that enjoys both full sun or partial shade.
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is one of the most widely cultivated vegetable crops and a model dicot plant. It is moderately sensitive to salinity throughout the period of growth and development.
Most plants will typically suffer injury if sodium exceeds 70 milligrams per liter in water, or 5 percent in plant tissue, or 230 milligrams per liter in soil, in the extract from a saturated soil paste.
In this group are sorghum, wheat, triticale, ripe, oats and barley. Only exceptions are corn and rice. All cereals tend to follow the same sensitivity or tolerance pattern in relation to their stage of growth.
Hostas. The hosta is a very good perennial for the shade, and it can tolerate moderate road salt. You many want to plant hostas a little bit back from the street to avoid the heavy salt directly by the roadside.
Salt use in winter can lead to weakened and damaged plants come spring time. Icy winter conditions increases the use of salt to melt ice on roads and sidewalks, which can lead to damage of ornamental plants adjacent to these areas.
Deciduous trees damaged from road salt may have many twigs densely clustered together, called witches' brooms, near the ends of branches as a result of terminal buds killed by salt spray. Other symptoms include unopened flower buds, twig dieback, sparse, stunted or yellow foliage, and leaf scorch.
As a general rule of thumb, coastal native plants and desert plants or succulents tend to be salt tolerant plants. Scientists have a word for the most extreme salt tolerant plants - halophytes. True halophytes are the kings of the salt tolerant plants and can even drink seawater.
Lavandula angustifolia 'Hidcote' - Plant Finder
English Lavender - not truly salt-tolerant, but lavender prefers sandy or rocky soil - lavendar is often grown in coastal locations because of its preference for dry air and sandy soil. Holds up well against windy weather too!
Plants absorb salts in water not only through their roots, but also through their leaves. Consequently, irrigation by overhead sprinklers will increase the plants' exposure to the salinity of the water used to irrigate them.
Blueberries are very sensitive to salt, so you might need to flush the soil with water between fertilizing to avoid buildup near the root system. This is especially important if you are growing your blueberries in containers.
It isn't the most simple garden problem to tackle, but there are certainly things you can do to help your plants and soil recover from salt contact. If you're worried about sodium buildup in the soil, flush it out by watering generously early in the morning and amend the soil with compost and gypsum.
Highly salt tolerant:
Aquilegia (Columbine) Armeria (Sea Thrift) Dianthus (Pinks) Grass-Calamagrostis 'Karl Foerster' (Feather Reed Grass)
If you can give your flowers some protection, these moderately salt tolerant perennials would work well: Fern Leaf Yarrow (Achillea filipendulina) Common Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) Agapanthus (Agapanthus africanus)
Three different halophyte species (Atriplex patula, Atriplex hortensis, and Atriplex canescans) have been found to rehabilitate soils contaminated with road salt over varying lengths of time.
Salinity becomes a problem when enough salts accumulate in the root zone to negatively affect plant growth. Excess salts in the root zone hinder plant roots from withdrawing water from surrounding soil. This lowers the amount of water available to the plant, regardless of the amount of water actually in the root zone.
“Salt water directly damages plants by accumulating chloride and sodium ions that can be toxic as they accumulate in plants. They can also create a kind of chemical drought where water in roots can diffuse out into the saltier soil. Both of these effects are damaging.
Well-established plants are extremely drought tolerant and have low fertility requirements, although they respond to fertilizer and water with lush growth. Crape myrtle has low salt tolerance, so it should not be irrigated with saline water or used near the coast unless it is well-protected from saline conditions.
Naturally occurring salt-tolerant plants, halophytes, which survive at high salt concentrations, provide a unique source of traits for the tolerance and of genes for membrane proteins involved in ion transport and their regulators: the genes that are functioning under salinity and could be transferred to agriculturally ...
If salt is high, but not extremely high, plants may grow slowly but not show other obvious symptoms. In broadleaves, excess salts carried with water into the plant will concentrate at leaf margins and tips, which turn yellow, then brown. Symptoms usually begin on the older foliage, which may die and drop prematurely.
Pepper is moderately sensitive to salt stress, showing yield losses when it grows in soils with an electrical conductivity as low as 1.5 dS m−1 [27]. Some pepper cultivars have been evaluated for salt stress tolerance [19].