Saline spots

[makar]

Here cattails plant themselves, and don't grow in saline.

[beaverdam]

Seed canaryseed in the saline spots. 3 years in a row ..... pray to the alkaline gods. Worked for us.

sumdumguy, did you bother harvesting those spots or did you just disk it down to replant for next year?

[sumdumguy]

We harvested them. We usually grew some canary so no big deal.

[farming101]

There is still water pressure in the ground.
While many areas are seeing the topsoil turning dryer than what was experienced during the extreme rains of the first half of the decade 2010-2020, there is still a bunch of water looking for a home lower down.
This pops up to the surface and as mentioned brings salts along with it.

Till that quits or slows down it will be a loosing battle.

What could bring some relief to the areas that are on the dry side could be some flushing rains that might take salts lower where that is possible. Regular rains could also dilute salts in areas with mild salinity and allow crops to grow.

Might be best to quit putting expensive inputs into those areas. Nitrogen is usually abundant.

[farmaholic]

I would like to tile drain a slough that has some saline spots around it but I would have to move the water half a mile away to dump it into a marsh that sometimes flows off our land and further down stream. Between costs to move the water that far and pissing neighbors and people down stream off I hardly think it's worth it.

Ironically, in some cases the only thing that grows in some of those spots are kochia and other weeds, then we take every measure possible(edge or authority) to control them and the spots lay bare without any vegetation, further exasperating the problem.

Just happy we don't have a pile of it here in the Slum.

[abeorike]

I had an area thirty years ago that grew nothing an old timer told me how to get rid of it. In the fall I worked it as deep as i could with the cultivator wing up two or three time and dried it out. In the spring i did the same thing. It was scheduled to be summer fallow that year and every time I worked it I worked that area deep as I could then worked the whole field the regular depth. Every time it rained I dried it out. the same thing the next spring before seeding. Grew canola on it that year and it was gone . New owners are still getting a good crop off it. His theory was to get the salt back down where it came from. salt was no problem in the early days because they plowed every spring and the hard pan was deep .

[Robertbarlage]

We have been using a ripper but only did one pass. Maybe a guy should cross rip? We're we have ripped couple times over seems to help but it doesn't fix over night that's for sure. Need a d11 with a 5 foot ripper