Winter deicing efforts can take a toll on your lawn, as rock salt and other ice melting products often leach into the soil, damaging grass and disrupting its growth. Protecting your lawn from salt damage starts with proactive strategies like using less harmful deicing alternatives, being mindful of usage, creating barriers between the concrete and lawn, and redirecting runoff to keep it from reaching the grass.
Additionally, flushing the soil with water after snowmelt helps move residual salt out of the root zone, and applying gypsum can neutralize the remaining sodium.
Living in Idaho and battling snow for many months of the year, I’m no stranger to using salt to combat ice on my driveway. In this article, I share the best preventative care tips — many of which I use myself — so you can keep your lawn healthy and vibrant.
What Salt Does to Your Lawn
Salt from de-icing products can wreak havoc on your lawn, mainly when the salt components build up in the soil.
- Dehydrates the grass: Salt in the soil pulls moisture from the grass blades and roots through osmosis, leading to dehydration and desiccation. Through a process known as “physiological drought,” it causes the grass to wither and die, even when there is adequate water in the soil.
- Toxicity problems: Neither sodium nor chloride is needed by grass for growth or other metabolic functions. So once in the soil they can quickly build to toxic levels within the grass, causing negative effects. They also can damage the lawn’s roots, inhibiting their ability to take up water and nutrients.
- Nutrient deficiencies: Excess sodium competes with ions such as magnesium and calcium, fighting for attachment sites on the soil particles. When sodium replaces these cations, they are less available for plant uptake, causing nutrient deficiencies.
- Lowers plant defenses: Excess sodium, coupled with the other effects mentioned, causes stress in your grass. A stressed lawn cannot ward off diseases and insect problems and is less capable of tolerating drought and heat.
Telltale symptoms of salt damage on your lawn include brown or discolored grass, visible patches of dead or thinning turf, delayed spring green-up, a wilted or dry appearance, and white crusty residue on the soil surface. These signs are usually more prominent along the edges of sidewalks, driveways, and roads, where the salt accumulates as snow melts and runs off of these surfaces.
How to Prevent Salt Damage On Grass
There are different ways to protect your lawn from salt damage, ranging from switching to different products to keeping salty runoff water from getting into the lawn to using water to move damaging salts out of the root zone.
Use Safer Alternatives
One of the best ways to protect your lawn from salt damage is to choose products that are less harmful to plants than the commonplace rock salt containing sodium chloride. Alternative deicers may be more expensive, but you’ll avoid the money repairing your lawn next spring.
Common alternatives include calcium chloride, potassium chloride, and magnesium chloride. You can also use sand or other abrasive materials like kitty litter instead of salt or mix your salt with them instead of using a straight deicer.
My Tip: I use a concrete and pet-friendly alternative ice melt. It’s salt, chlorine, and acetate-free, so it poses no threats to the environment, my puppy, and the grass and flowerbed by the driveway and sidewalk.
If you’re pouring new concrete, look into heated driveway and sidewalk options. They typically use electric coils or a boiler system to run a mixture of hot water and propylene glycol through buried pipes. The system heats the concrete, melting the snow. A heated driveway costs $12 to $23 per square foot to install.
Minimize Salt Usage
Apply rock salt or deicers sparingly, making sure you don’t over apply the products. While a little is good, too much isn’t always better.
- Target specific areas of ice instead of salting the entire driveway or sidewalk.
- Use about a handful of product per square yard, no more.
- Use a handheld or push spreader to distribute salt evenly across surfaces. Applying it this way results in less waste.
- Avoid salting when it’s too cold. As a rule of thumb, traditional rock salt (sodium chloride) is ineffective when temperatures drop below 15 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Shovel or use a snowblower early and often during a storm to prevent the snow from compacting into ice. The less ice that forms, the less salt you’ll need.
My Tip: One way I try to keep ice off my driveway is to get out to shovel while it’s still snowing or immediately after it stops. My neighbors (and kids) often laugh at me, but it works. A big section of my driveway is shaded by the garage after lunch, so it easily forms ice. Plus, I always try to shovel before pulling in and out of the driveway and garage to keep from compacting new snow and turning it into ice.
Create Physical Barriers
Use landscaping rocks or gravel to create barrier strips between concrete and grassy areas. If space allows, you could also plant salt-tolerant hedges or evergreen shrubs between the concrete and lawn. Any salty water that does run off into these spots will soak into the soil in the barrier strip instead, helping to minimize negative effects of salt on your lawn.
You can also install burlap or snow fence along the edges of driveways and roads to help block salt spray.
Redirect Runoff
Another way to protect from salt damage is to put proper drainage in place to keep salty water from running off the concrete onto your lawn. You can use trenches or slope adjustment to keep it from accumulating in grassy areas.
- Install a low curb, edging, or berm along the edges of your driveway or sidewalks to guide runoff toward designated drainage points, away from the lawn.
- Make sure your driveway, sidewalk, and surrounding soil slope away from grassy areas and are directed toward a drainage point. A slope of at least 2% (a 2-foot drop for every 100 feet) is ideal.
- Install a channel drain across the sidewalk or driveway to collect water and move it toward a storm drain.
- Add french drains to the edge of your lawn by digging a trench filled with gravel and a perforated pipe to redirect water.
Protect the Soil
Apply a thin layer of mulch or finished compost — 2 to 3 inches of mulch and one-quarter to one-half inch of compost will be sufficient — to the lawn along the edges of your driveway or sidewalk. This layer of organic material will help to “trap” the salt instead of letting it leach down into the soil, potentially affecting the grass.
When spring rolls around, you can rake it up and discard it, or use it in areas where you don’t have to worry about salt damage.
Choose Salt-Tolerant Grasses and Alternatives
Depending on where in the United States you live, choose grass species that exhibit higher salt tolerance. A grass that is more tolerant of salt will have less damage if you need to use it.
- The best salt-tolerant cool-season grasses for northern locations include perennial ryegrass, tall fescue, and creeping red fescue. They have moderate salt tolerance — which isn’t as good as some warm-season turfs but is better than Kentucky bluegrass.
- Salt-tolerant warm-season grasses include St. Augustinegrass, Bermudagrass, and seashore paspalum. These grasses grow best in the South (where snow isn’t a regular occurrence) but are also found in some areas of the transition zone that may experience colder winter temperatures and snow.
If you’re looking for salt-tolerant alternatives to grass, some fantastic evergreen options are American holly, bearberry, cotoneaster, English yew, false cypress, and littleleaf boxwood. Their ability to withstand saline conditions (i.e., salt) make them perfect for planting in strips between your driveway or sidewalk and lawn.
Flush the Soil Regularly
When the ground isn’t frozen, use your garden hose to flush as much salt as possible from the soil in the root zone. Turn it on a setting similar to a rain shower or shower head to distribute water in a natural pattern without much force. The water will move sodium in the soil further down into the ground, where your lawn’s roots can’t access it.
My Tip: You must use a lot of water in this step. I typically water the entire spot until water starts pooling on the soil. Allow it to soak in, and repeat three to four times. I’m not usually one to promote overwatering as I technically live in the desert, but in this case, water, water, and water some more!
Apply Gypsum
Gypsum, or calcium sulfate, is the best soil amendment to “knock” the sodium off the soil particles and organic matter. The calcium in gypsum replaces the sodium on the soil particles, freeing the sodium to react with the sulfate, forming sodium sulfate. The sodium sulfate rapidly dissolves in the soil solution, where it can be easily flushed or leached from the root zone.
It should be applied at 20 to 40 pounds per 100 square feet of soil. After application, flush the soil with plenty of water to push the sodium sulfate out of the root zone.
According to Complete Land Organics, “The calcium in gypsum displaces salt residues which help to reduce the uptake of damaging salts through the plants root zone. For best results, put pelletized gypsum in your lawn spreader making two passes (full open rate) around street curbs, driveways, sidewalks or wherever ice melter will be repeatedly used this winter.”
Avoid Salting Near Grass
When applying deicers to your driveway or sidewalk, maintain a buffer zone of 12 inches to 18 inches from the edge of the concrete. Once the product works in the middle areas, use a show shovel or square point shovel to remove the ice closest to the grass.
Disperse Snow Piles
If you’re not removing the snow from your property, avoid piling it in one place. The more snow that is left to accumulate in one spot, the more salt residue that may eventually mix with snow and run off into your lawn, creating a concentrated area. Dispersing snow piles doesn’t get rid of the salt but it helps to dilute concentrations in runoff water.
Inspect Regularly
Consistently check your lawn in the spring for signs of salt damage, such as browning or thinning grass, and take corrective action as needed. It’s much easier to repair salt damage on your lawn when it’s minor versus severe.
FAQs About Protecting Your Lawn From Salt Damage
Will grass grow back after salt damage?
Whether or not grass grows back depends on the severity of the salt damage and the type of grass you have. If there is only minor damage, your grass will likely grow back. It’s harder for grass to recover after severe damage, especially if the lawn experienced significant sodium toxicity. It’s also harder for grasses to recover if they aren’t salt tolerant.
Removing as much residual salt from the soil as possible is the best way to improve soil health and encourage your grass to regrow.
How do you repair salt damage on your lawn?
To repair salt damage on your lawn, you’ll want to use water and gypsum to move any residual salt out of the root zone and fix any bare spots that occurred by topdressing and overseeding.
Why are some plants more tolerant of salt than others?
Some plants are better able to withstand salty conditions due to physiological and structural adaptations that help them circumvent the challenges of high salinity. Some plants can actively block salt from entering their roots. Some species have specialized glands on their leaves that excrete salt, preventing toxic buildup within the tissues. Some plants have storage compartments known as vacuoles where they can stash salts to keep their cytoplasm free of the toxic ions.
Reach Out to a Professional
It’s a balancing act in the winter months trying to keep your sidewalks and driveways free of ice without causing salt damage to your lawn. Thankfully, the above ideas should help you safely use deicing products without decimating your grass.
If in spring you see irreparable damage, consider hiring a local pro to fix your lawn! Whether you need help fixing bare spots by overseeding with salt-tolerant grasses, or installing French drains, they can help get your lawn looking its best.
Main Photo Credit: Iryna / Adobe Stock
