Can Salted Soil Ever Be Recovered?

[HeyHomie]

Let’s say somebody gets mad at me and takes their revenge by the centuries-old revenge method of pouring salt on my fields, rendering them unable to produce a crop.

With modern fertilizers and composting methods and irrigation and blah blah blah, is it possible that my fields could someday be useful again?

[CalMeacham]

1.) The Romans supposedly sowed the ground of Carthage with salt. People grow things there now.

2.) The Salt Lake valley in Utah was once the bottom of Lake Bonneville, a salt lake, which evaporated, leaving salty soil. (A LOT saltuer than a bunch of Romans with salt shakers could render a town in North Africa). The settlers wouldn’t have stayed if they couldn’t grow things there. It turned out that if you brought “sweet soil” down from above The Benches (the old Bonneville beaches), you could grow things bigger and easier. Today the Salt Lake Valley is very green.
So, yeah, you can recover salty soil. The Salt Lake Valley recovered in less than a century of pioneer effort.

[The_Second_Stone]

What evidence is there that Carthage was salted? Salt in Ancient Rome was as expensive as money itself. See def of the word “salary”.

[md2000]

I recall reading that a side-effect of the Aswan dams was that the annual Nile flooding was curtailed and with the new dam, no longer happens. Not long after, the Egyptians discovered a basic flaw - all groundwater, even rivers, contain a small residue of minerals; irrigate and the evaporating water leaves these accumulating salts behind. Originally, the though was too much water washed away the good nutrient minerals. The solution they use now, is that they over-water and ensure there is no salt build-up in the soil. Fortunately the Nile valley is narrow, everywhere is close to the massive water supply, and ground-water run-off returns to the river to be re-used downstream.

IIRC, this is a problem in the Mesopotamian lands, where millennia of irrigation has salted much of the ground and it is not as fertile - and they don’t have the Nile’s abundance of water to flush these salts back down to the ocean. There’s the whole issue that the salts will accumulate low down in the soil as the evaporating water filters downward and the remain water becomes more concentrated with salt. At a certain point, the bottom of the soil layer is so full of salt it leaches upward with watering.

So short answer - if you have a decent access to fresh water (or good precipitation), and a drainage system so your salty water drains away, then eventually your soil will leach clean.

[CalMeacham]

@The_Second_Stone

What evidence is there that Carthage was salted? Salt in Ancient Rome was as expensive as money itself. See def of the word “salary”.

From Wikipedia:

Starting in the 19th century,[7] various texts claim that the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus Africanus plowed over and sowed the city of Carthage with salt after defeating it in the Third Punic War (146 BC), sacking it, and forcing the survivors into slavery. However, no ancient sources exist documenting the salting itself. The Carthage story is a later invention, probably modelled on the story of Shechem.[8] The ritual of symbolically drawing a plow over the site of a city is, however, mentioned in ancient sources, though not in reference to Carthage specifically.[9]

I just quoted it because it’s a famous story. I never thought of the salting of Carthage as likely to be more than ceremonial. Even if salt wasn’t a valued commodity, there’s only so much that could have been spread around even with determined effort.

Salting the earth

The Master Speaks:

Did ancient conquerors punish their enemies by sowing captured fields with salt?

[gazpacho]

@The_Second_Stone

What evidence is there that Carthage was salted? Salt in Ancient Rome was as expensive as money itself. See def of the word “salary”.

According to Cecil there are no accounts from that time that mention Rome salting Carthage.

Did ancient conquerors punish their enemies by sowing captured fields with salt?

[kayaker]

Interesting piece from NPR’s The Salt.

[ftg]

Surprised no one has mentioned The Netherlands in this regard. They have reclaimed land once submerged under the sea which was salt contaminated. And which then gets re-contaminated when there is a flood or war. Note that a lot of references for the Wikipedia article on Soil Salinity Control are from the Dutch.

The solution to a short term contamination is occasional flooding with fresh water and deep plowing. Long term requires dealing with the source.

[md2000]

Some areas of the Midwest, IIRC, are sitting on top of an evaporated sea (which explains the salt domes a few hundred feet down even in places like Louisiana.)

Overwatering has the opposite effect… instead of flushing the salt away to the rivers, it soaks down and over time the salt leeches up to the surface wrecking the land. Sometimes spraying too much water on the land is not good. (There’s a spot on the trans-Canada highway in Saskatchewan where the salt in the low lying fields looks like snow. Many of the low ponds have white salt rims. )

[kaylasdad99]

To the OP: Plant peanuts.

[Weedy]

Soil salinity is usually a large scale environmental problem, caused by factors like climate, geography and detrimental agricultural practices. If salinity is not normally a problem in your area, I think the extra salt will just wash out over time.

[Derleth]

@The_Second_Stone

What evidence is there that Carthage was salted? Salt in Ancient Rome was as expensive as money itself. See def of the word “salary”.

You’re thinking of “etymology” and you’re wrong.

I know it’s been done before. I just wanted to pour salt in the wound. Besides, my link has more cites embedded in it.