Salt water damage is a fact of life with many of us living so close to the ocean. A storm surge from a hurricane or heavy rain can wreak havoc on your lawn and garden beds.
I know that for many of you, the last thing you want to worry about after a surge is your lawn or garden. But you have invested a lot of time and money into your landscape. Don’t give up. After the water recedes and life starts to get back to normal, you should consider these few small easy steps to get your lawn and garden back to health and protect it from salt damage.
The first thing you should do is remove any debris such as leaves, branches and garbage. This will allow sunlight to get back down to the grass plants and help start to dry out the saturated soil, which is like a wet sponge. The next thing is to remove any silt (very small particles of rock) that may have deposited on the lawn as the water moved out.
After these steps are completed, you need to aerate the soil of the lawn or garden. Aerating is simply poking holes a few inches into the soil. This can be done by wearing a pair of aerating sandals that have 2 inch spikes on the bottom-similar to golf shoes-or you can do it by hand with an aerating tool. You can also rent a core aerating machine, which is similar to a lawn mower that you run over the lawn, and it takes out plugs of soil. Another effective method is by slicing the soil with a spade. Try to keep foot traffic to a minimum.
Salt leaves excess sodium in the soil and it will probably change the PH. You should do a soil test and correct the PH balance by adding lime if needed. The next 2 steps are the most important. Irrigate your soil with fresh water to help wash the salt out of the root zone and then apply gypsum to your soil. The gypsum will react with the salt and break it apart so it does minimal damage to your lawn and/or plants.
Don’t fertilize right away. You don’t want to encourage excessive plant growth in damaged soil. Instead, apply a top dressing of compost and slowly add organics back to the soil. Apply regular fertilizer about a month later. This should bring your soil back to normal.
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