Soil Salinity

Hello All,

Last November we moved to a property with the hopes to start a perennial market garden in our community. Since we moved in, we have learned that the main area we planned for fruit trees and berries, has had a pipe diverting the water softening systems spent salt water from flushing the tanks every 48 hours to it, which we have now redirected away from this area.  The system was installed due to very high levels of iron in the water.  We know we cannot irrigate with the softened water but now are unsure of how it has effected the soil.  We have very slow draining, but nice soil with some clay. To add to the fun, this is the lowest spot on the property and we noticed it was quite saturated and sloppy, puddled even, this past winter.  Is the area completely unplantable, can it be amended, are there salty soil tolerant options of perennials?  We have been researching online but haven't found much at this point, though we have contacted a local facility to do soil testing. We are in Oregon, zone 8b.      

Thank you in advance for any thoughts 🙂

Is anything growing there now?

If it is salty I bet a year of rain outta help immensely. I am not sure how you can test that though aside from the ol' "see if it grows" method. Also, I would think that you would have to fix the low spot either way, most trees don't want to be soggy.

Oh and there are plants that pull salt out of soil. Not sure how fast or how much. Salsify or something? I can't remember the name but there is a plant that I know people grow and then use the plant itself to "salt" their food.

Hm! That is an unpleasant surprise.

I would agree that soil testing is a good investment prior to planting fruit trees.

I found this link informative regarding testing and remediation:
https://extension.uga.edu/publications/detail.html?number=C1019

Dan Fish wrote:Is anything growing there now?

If it is salty I bet a year of rain outta help immensely. I am not sure how you can test that though aside from the ol' "see if it grows" method. Also, I would think that you would have to fix the low spot either way, most trees don't want to be soggy.

Oh and there are plants that pull salt out of soil. Not sure how fast or how much. Salsify or something? I can't remember the name but there is a plant that I know people grow and then use the plant itself to "salt" their food.

Lawn is growing there now and it doesn't seem to have a problem, even with the soggy.  We do plan on fixing the low spots for sure.  Thank you for the suggestion of the Salsify, salt pulling plants. We will look into that!

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Hm! That is an unpleasant surprise.

I would agree that soil testing is a good investment prior to planting fruit trees.

I found this link informative regarding testing and remediation:
https://extension.uga.edu/publications/detail.html?number=C1019

Thank you for the link, it is very informative.  I will see if our local OSU extension has a similar option!