Mixing Salt In The Soil

[anthoma]

My girlfriend tells me that the local farmers no put salt on their cassavafields and around rubber and palm oil trees. They say it keeps the gras away and that it also works good as fertilizer. For me this sounds crazy but im not a farmer. My GF have now bought 300 kilogram with this salt and she's mixing this with normal fertilizer and putting it around palmoil trees and she also plan to spray the cassavafields with this salt. I would think that it will damage the soil to put all that salt around, but wonder if somebody elles have heard about this or have any comments.

[Lickey]

I thought about using salt last year as a way of keeping the snails of the banana plants, but some web site advised againts putting salt near plants,

On the other hand, acording to this website, its not a bad idea, if used in moderation,,

http://www.ipni.net/ppiweb/agbrief.nsf/5a4...33;OpenDocument

Cheers, Lickey.

[anthoma]

Thank you for the link Lickey. So i guess adding salt to the soil was not as stupid as i thought it was. But as i understand this dokument there are already salt in normal fertilizer, and when we now add both fertilizer and salt, the soil can become too salty and the plants will not be able to absorb water and they will dry out. What I understand is that the local farmers here add salt instead of fertilizer, but we are adding both in a 50/50 mix.

[tftest]

bah, i'm apparently not allowed to post links..

try 'Salting the earth' on wikipedia

just a thought..

[loong]

This link?

Salting The Earth

Not really anything to do with soil

Soil Salinity

Has some but very little info.

Lickey's link is much more informative and it appears though some salts can be good, Sodium Chloride (table salt) is not.

[tftest]

Oh wow, sorry, just saw 'salt' and assumed what he meant by it. I don't have much patience..

Edited May 2, 2009 by tftest

[teletiger]

You're sure this stuff is salt, as in sodium chloride? Thais often label things they don't really understand. 'As in "Yaar". Could be anything from DDT, to Paraquat, to Roundup. Did you taste it? Might be lime, or a profusion of "ites". (dolomite etc) Just a thought.

Regards.

[anthoma]

I never taste it but my GF says i tastes very salty. She say that this is a waiste-product (spelling?) from salt-produktion. Its the bad quality salt that they cannot use to make table salt. She buy this salt in 30 kilos sacks for 75 bath pr sack. Its not fine powder as table salt, but the pieces of this salt is rather large and have kind of grey/yellow colour. Yesterday she got a visit from some relatives from Korat comming here for a wedding, and they say that the farmers in Korat also use this salt on their cassavafields with very good results.

[loong]

Maybe you can get her to write the name of this "salt" in Thai. maybe somebody will know of it

[loong]

I happened to be reading about Potassium (K), potash and it made me think about this topic.

Most of the known world reserves of K were developed as sea water evaporated and K salts crystallized to become the beds of potash ore being mined today. The deposits are a mixture of crystals of potassium chloride (KCl) and sodium chloride (NaCl), better known as common table salt. Separation of the KCl from the mixture produces a high analysis natural K fertilizer.

Quote is from http://www.potashcorp.com/learn_about_fert...bout/potassium/

The North east of Thailand has one of the largest deposits of K in the world, but there are environmental issues in mining it.

So it does seem quite likely that the salt your Gf has is potassium chloride.

[anthoma]

Thank you for that information loong. So it looks like putting this "salt" on our fields was not so stupid as i thought.

[WatersEdge]

I want to buy this apparently reject mixed NaCl & KCl salt in truckload lots 30 tons per load.

Many thanks to the helpful person who can connect me to the factory.

I will gladly buy from small producers even in modest amounts.

Just need a steady supply of coarse salt.

[Mosha]

We use it to repel the ants from our rubber. We buy it at 10 baht per sack, and she buys about 1/2 sack per Rai. We go down to the local fish docks for it.

[RedBullHorn]

I never taste it but my GF says i tastes very salty. She say that this is a waiste-product (spelling?) from salt-produktion. Its the bad quality salt that they cannot use to make table salt. She buy this salt in 30 kilos sacks for 75 bath pr sack. Its not fine powder as table salt, but the pieces of this salt is rather large and have kind of grey/yellow colour. Yesterday she got a visit from some relatives from Korat comming here for a wedding, and they say that the farmers in Korat also use this salt on their cassavafields with very good results.

It's not waste product from salt production...it's just unprocessed salt in their natural form that are use to make processed filtered-clean table salt, salt are still wet with sea water and compaction in sack result in some large pieces. Local call it unprocessed sea salt or black salt(ker dump) due to black/grey or yellow tinge mixed colours. It cost me 90 baht/sack and i use a lot in all my fresh-water catfish ponds as a kind of anti-bacteria agent.

[WatersEdge]

If it is from Isaan it is not sea salt....there is no sea there.

Isaan has not been mentioned here,

but that's where the KCl NaCl blend of salt comes from.

Sea salt has a low KCl content, mainly NaCl,

so it would not be any good for fertilizing plants.

Some plants are Na tolerant,

in a previous thread

Celery

Asparagus were mentioned

but nothing actually needs or benefits from it.

Since this mystery salt is good for plants,

it must have a strong K content.

In porous soil, both salts NaCl and KCl leach below the root zone quickly,

so a buildup of Na wouldn't be a big problem.

If anyone knows where to buy a truckload, large or small,

I remain interested.

Would someone Please connect me with producers?

[Gary A]

Farmers spend BIG money trying to get salt OUT of their soil and here we have people recommending putting salt IN the soil. Many so called salts are NOT table or waste table salt. I'd strongly recommend using Google to find the facts before deliberately contaminating your soil.

[Beardog]

The only thing we use salt on(de Klua-sea salt ) is the coconut trees. a gal from Cambodia explained that since coconut trees are native to the ocean beaches -salt is part of their makeup & in the early growing phase to give a handful a month to each coconut tree. we stopped for 2 months & the trees seamed to be withering so I started back on giving salt for 6 months & they are doing great. If this is in truth the actual reason who knows- a rabbits foot might work just as well in the land of the superstitious. I would sure side with Gary on not contaminating the soil. Anything that will change the PH balance could be catastrophic to your farm.

[Gary A]

If salt water were good for crops, everyone would be using sea water for irrigation. How many sea water irrigated farms do you see?

[Boksida]

To drill and sample the extensive rock salt (halite) and potassium salt formations in Isaan requires a special drilling mud to prevent dissolving the formations. The normal methods in Thailand are a mud based on diesel fuel (expensive) or saturated salt solution. Disposal and rehabilitation is a big problem. I don't know anything about farming, but sugar cane growers in the area often asked the drillers for excess salt mud to spray on their crop as they claimed improved yields. Of course, this was very convenient for the drilling contractor. One of the biggest problems with rehabilitating sites where oil based mud had been used was that years later the sites could still be found because they were much greener than the surrounding areas, presumably due to residual potassium contamination.

[cmfarmer]

Perhaps the compound mentioned is sodium chlorate ( NaClO3 ).

Sodium chlorate is a non selective herbicide. You can find some information in Wikipedia.org

[WatersEdge]

I understand that we are Farmers here, not Chemists,

but here's the tough news of Farming...

you must learn a little Chemistry if you intend to be any good at Farming.

Salt in the broad chemical sense is what you get from mixing a base with an acid.

Two very reactive compounds neutralize each other to form a more stable compound.

They each have unique characteristics.

There are potentially dozens of different salts

But this isn't Chemistry...it's Farming....

Salt in the common sense of Table Salt is NaCl Sodium Chloride.

Sea Salt is primarily NaCl

with all the other minor things that were also dissolved in the sea water at that location.

It is Not good for plants, even though a few plants are somewhat Sodium tolerant.

The "Salt" that is good for plants is Potassium Chloride KCl

The chemical fertilizer formula 0-0-60 is KCl

Without Potassium K, fruit will not form, including grain,

No Potassium => No harvest

No shortcuts No magic tricks...finished.

You may wonder why Potassium has the chemical symbol K.

observing that letter K is nowhere in Potassium.

The obsolete word for Potassium is Kalium,

still an active word in German

Clearing another possible point of confusion,

the chemical symbol P is Phosphorous,

which happens to be another macro nutrient vital to plant growth.

The fertilizer chemistry of P and the plant physiology requiring it is for another day.

In NE Thailand is the only significant deposit of Potash in Asia.

It is enormous and it is valuable.

To this point is mined only piece meal in small scattered spots.

Geologically KCl is found at the bottom of deep salt beds,

below larger deposits of Table Salt NaCl

The entire deposit is buried under overburden.

Mining is seldom neat and tidy...so there are mixed zones as well.

But this isn't Mine Geology, it's Farming

[thaidrav]

I met some HYDROPONIC growers in Florida, USA, that were using a mix of raw sea salt and potassium nitrate in their beds. The results were very good. It seems sea salt has lots of micro-nutrients that plants can use. They called it Seaponics. Maybe it's a question of quantity and availability. In regular soil farming even fertilizer salts in Muriate of Potash and Triple super Phosphate can cause a drought effect in plants when used in excess.

[Gary A]

I met some HYDROPONIC growers in Florida, USA, that were using a mix of raw sea salt and potassium nitrate in their beds. The results were very good. It seems sea salt has lots of micro-nutrients that plants can use. They called it Seaponics. Maybe it's a question of quantity and availability. In regular soil farming even fertilizer salts in Muriate of Potash and Triple super Phosphate can cause a drought effect in plants when used in excess.

A shortage of water is a major problem when farming. If salt were good for the ground and crops, then land near the sea would be very productive. Why isn't sea water used for irrigation?

[jubby]

I was just thinking about some trees I planted 6 months ago (same type of tree) and how they are growing very slowly except for 1 which is near the washing machine waste outlet, and the sink come to think of it. This tree is huge, 6 times the growth of the others in just six months, I was thinking maybe its due to getting more water, but the contents of the washing power must be helping considerably. I suspect there's a lot of salt or salt type chemicals in it. I was thinking about giving aditional fertilisers to the other trees but maybe I just need to give them washing powder instead. I'll have to find out the ingredients.

[Harcourt]

Alot of talk abot potassium salt....I'm suprised nobody has mentioned magnesium sulphate, epsom salts.

I regularly put it on the ground around my citrus trees when the leaves begin to yellow. It is "salt" it looks like coarse salt, and tastes salty (and is actually a cure for constipation), and is widely reccomended by plant experts for the use that I use it....

[Harcourt]

I was just thinking about some trees I planted 6 months ago (same type of tree) and how they are growing very slowly except for 1 which is near the washing machine waste outlet, and the sink come to think of it. This tree is huge, 6 times the growth of the others in just six months, I was thinking maybe its due to getting more water, but the contents of the washing power must be helping considerably. I suspect there's a lot of salt or salt type chemicals in it. I was thinking about giving aditional fertilisers to the other trees but maybe I just need to give them washing powder instead. I'll have to find out the ingredients.

More likely it is a direct result on soil Ph (acidity), not neccessarily any specific element such as potassium or phosphorous. Mind you, there are probably phosphates in washing powder, not to mention organic matter in washing water.

NPK fertilizer = Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Potssium.

Edited December 6, 2009 by Harcourt

[jubby]

The trees are all on the same Rai or so, of land (clay, mostly). I suppose its possible I have one good patch of good fertile soil.

I think I'm going to have to investigate more fully. Get the soil tested or something. I did throw some washing powder on another tree yesterday though just in case . This tree has shot straight up, reminds me of 'Jack & the Beanstalk'

[reallyok]

I met some HYDROPONIC growers in Florida, USA, that were using a mix of raw sea salt and potassium nitrate in their beds. The results were very good. It seems sea salt has lots of micro-nutrients that plants can use. They called it Seaponics. Maybe it's a question of quantity and availability. In regular soil farming even fertilizer salts in Muriate of Potash and Triple super Phosphate can cause a drought effect in plants when used in excess.

A shortage of water is a major problem when farming. If salt were good for the ground and crops, then land near the sea would be very productive. Why isn't sea water used for irrigation?

Yes Garry, putting salt onto good soil sounds absolutely crazy to me !