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Does putting all this salt on the sidewalks and driveways of your house affect plants around your house? I would imagine that over the years the salt buildup in

• analog31 6y ago
  Plants grow anywhere in the Midwest, just not the ones you want. ;-) Yes to some extent. We actually use the sand/salt quite sparingly, because shoveling usually takes care of things. Just a bit on the front steps, and in a couple places where it tends to ice up on the sidewalks in late winter. Probably the main source of salt is what gets thrown from the street by the plow trucks. The lot slopes down towards the street, which helps, and what happens to the grass on the boulevard, we basically don't care. The weeds seem happy enough. The University of Wisconsin has actually developed varieties of trees that are resistant to salt, and we have those varieties out front. At my workplace they salt more heavily, and have had to re-sod the grass near the walkways. But I think that's the result of several factors, including over-fertilizing during the summer, and maybe having a variety of grass that's less salt tolerant than our weeds. We also don't fertilize or water our lawn.