Question What to do about salty soil?

[Grandmother Goose]

When I bought this house, I did so long distance, my son who is the furthest thing from a botanist inspected it on my behalf and gave me a video tour of the place for me. In the far back of the yard there was a huge old tree that I had hoped was a black sheoak - an Aussie native. But once I got here and went and had a closer look, to my disappointment it was an athel pine - an introduced pest. Athel pines create a few problems, the one that is bothering me is that they draw up salts from deep in the earth and deposit them on the surface of their leaves. The leaves then fall to the ground and start to decay, the rain washes the salts off the leaves and into the topsoil. The result is that it kills every other plant around it and nothing much of anything will grow anywhere near the tree. Sure enough, the soil down that part of the yard is dead, even the weeds don't want to know about it. I've attacked the tree and cut it down, still yet to get the enormous stump out of the ground - and despite poisoning the darn thing it's still growing back slowly - again. Someone had previously cut it down to a stump, drilled holes in it and poisoned it and it still grew back to being a huge tree when I got here. I'm planning on really going at it and physically digging it all out, it won't be coming back again by the time I'm done with it.

Once the tree is completely gone, I still have the salt contaminated soil to content with. I've been doing the internet research thing for a while now, and finding various ideas on the topic.
1. Spend a few years growing a lot of saltbush to suck up the salt from the soil, then get rid of the saltbush, apparently it's good for livestock (not that I have any but I'm sure I could find someone that does).
2. Do a rain dance and pray for a downpour, enough fresh water will wash the salt away or deeper into the ground where it will do no harm.
3. Dig it up, chuck it out, get new soil.
4. Bury it by putting fresh good soil on top.

I don't want to be spending years fixing the soil, I also don't want to be spending thousands of dollars to get rid of what is there and replace it all, but I'll do whatever is required. I just don't want to be spending a lot of time, or spending a lot of money, if I don't need to, so I want to know with at least some confidence what will and what will not work. I would love to hear from anyone that has dealt with this successfully. Athel pine trees aren't the only thing that salts soil, sea water does the same, among other things. Any sound advice, including suggestions as to who might know that would be worth contacting if no one here does, would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Mandy Onderwater]

On my phone and in the car so can't answer properly, but I'd give this website I check if I were you

What Are Some Remediations When Soil Becomes Too Salty?

Plants require moisture and nutrients from the soil to thrive and produce flowers or...

homeguides.sfgate.com

 

[JP 1983]

I'd also consider planting pigface in the area. As long as it has full sun and fairly well-draining soil (aerate it with a pitchfork or aerator before planting), pigface is amazing at drawing salts out of soils. Pigface is a native Aussie succulent creeper usually found growing abundantly on dunes near beaches. Even better is that you can throw their fleshy spears into your stir-fries for a salty kick, and the beautiful pink flowers turn into edible fruits that taste somewhat like a gooey, salty fig. I have found that some varieties have very astringent leaves and fruit skins, but you can just cut the fruits across the belly and suck out all the goopy insides for a delicious snack, and cooking will usually diminish astringency in the leaves.

You can literally steal the runners from this plant from wherever you see it growing and just whack them in the ground. As succulents, they'll root from a stem very easily as long as you give them a bit of water to encourage root growth.

The best variety I found was growing wild near Sandy Bay in Tasmania. It had huge flowers which turned into big, red fruits which were absolutely delicious. Some varieties do not change colour when fruits are ripe, and green fruits are difficult to spot on the plants except by looking for the dead flower caps.

Pigface

 

[HelenCate]

There a is actually a surprisingly large number of Native plants that can handle salinity. Is turning that piece of your land over to a Native garden something you would consider?

 

[Grandmother Goose]

I'd also consider planting pigface in the area. As long as it has full sun and fairly well-draining soil (aerate it with a pitchfork or aerator before planting), pigface is amazing at drawing salts out of soils. Pigface is a native Aussie succulent creeper usually found growing abundantly on dunes near beaches. Even better is that you can throw their fleshy spears into your stir-fries for a salty kick, and the beautiful pink flowers turn into edible fruits that taste somewhat like a gooey, salty fig. I have found that some varieties have very astringent leaves and fruit skins, but you can just cut the fruits across the belly and suck out all the goopy insides for a delicious snack, and cooking will usually diminish astringency in the leaves.

You can literally steal the runners from this plant from wherever you see it growing and just whack them in the ground. As succulents, they'll root from a stem very easily as long as you give them a bit of water to encourage root growth.

The best variety I found was growing wild near Sandy Bay in Tasmania. It had huge flowers which turned into big, red fruits which were absolutely delicious. Some varieties do not change colour when fruits are ripe, and green fruits are difficult to spot on the plants except by looking for the dead flower caps.

Pigface

Got a lot of that growing around here. I thought it was native to Africa, but on looking it up after your suggestion I learned 6 species are native to Australia. Interesting, and that might be the answer as I went down there today and since we've had some rain, I found a heap of young pigfaces of a different smaller variety starting to grow, so I might let them go nuts back there for a while.
Thank you.

 

[Grandmother Goose]

There a is actually a surprisingly large number of Native plants that can handle salinity. Is turning that piece of your land over to a Native garden something you would consider?

In the long term I want to turn it into a miniature backyard "meadow" of grasses and clovers with a small pond, as I plan on turning it into a yard for ducks and geese. At present it's a significantly raised area of the yard and I'd like to level it out to the rest of the yard, expose the natural rock that exists in one part of it by reducing the amount of dirt. I want to turn the sandy dirt into good stuff and put the soil to use in future raised garden beds in the rest of the yard to save on buying soil, but don't want to be putting salt rich soil in a veggie garden bed.

 

[HelenCate]

The only way I can think of to desalinate the soil would be to add a heap of gypsum to that area and water it in well. And then hope for a bunch of good rain to send it back where it came from.