Salt Case

Salt

1) Introduction: During the winter, you spread salt daily on your driveway to melt the snow. In the springtime, when the lawn begins to grow, you notice that there is no grass growing for about 3 inches from the driveway. Furthermore, the grass seems to be growing more slowly up to about 1 foot from the driveway. Might grass growth be inhibited by salt?

2) Hypothesis: When the snow melts, with the salt on top of it, it absorbs water and salt in to the ground damaging or destroying the grass roots there for the grass cannot grow.

3) Prediction: If salt water gets absorbed into the grass roots, then the grass cannot grow.

4) Controlled Experimental Method: In a yard with snow, over grass, you set up four, two by two squares, at least three to five feet apart so the experiments don't affect each other. On two of the squares you add salt; the other two are the control, so nothing would be added to them. The two boxes with salt should melt more quickly that the two without, for them you would have to wait for a warm day. Then come summer when the grass should be growing green, you check your experiments which should still be set up. Now it's advised to use 3 pounds of dry salt per 1,000 square feet of snow and if one cup of rock salt equals ten ounces and sixteen ounces equals one pound. Then I recommend that we use table spoons and if sixteen table spoons equal one cup, then I suggest that we only use two table spoons per two by two boxes. Once testing the soils of the two boxes with salt they should have an EC above 4.0 mmhos/cm and an ESP greater than 15 percent. And regular soil should have EC less than 4.0 mmhos/cm. (Soil, 2008)

5) Results: The results being that the two boxes with salt in them have an EC above 4.0 mmhos/cm, killing the grass and the two boxes without salt in them have EC less than 4.0 mmhos/cm, which let the grass live.

6) Conclusion: I definitely support the results provided from this experiment making my hypothesis correct. I do however believe that this experiment could do with more studying. Such as doing several experiments with varying levels of salt in each to see how much each amount affected the growth of the grass. And also doing ones without snow to make sure the snow isn't causing extra adverse effects, it's unlikely that snow would create more of a problem than salt but until tested the answer to that particular question is unknown.

References

Might Grass be Inhibited by Salt?, 2012, Yahoo Answers,

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101230064215AAF4Vg0

Soil Salinity Testing, 2008, NRCS,

http://www.mt.nrcs.usda.gov/technical/ecs/plants/technotes/pmtechnoteMT60/salinity_test.html