Suck it up. That’s how to put those saline scars back into profitable production. Seed down with varieties that will suck up the salts, then harvest the saline saturated plants to remove salts.
Once saline spots are identified in a field, the next step is to get something growing there. There’s a handful of varieties suited to the Canadian prairies.
Here are seven of the main ones, listed in order of saline tolerance by Agriculture Canada’s rating system:
1) AC Saltlander green wheatgrass tops the list with a saline tolerance number of 12.92. Saltlander was developed by the Swift Current Research and Development Centre and released in 2004. It’s a perennial forage grass with exceptional salinity tolerance. The creeping root system can dewater saline areas and spread out, covering the ground to compete with undesired plants.
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Saltlander is productive, palatable and has good nutritional qualities. It’s believed to originate from a naturally occurring hybrid between blue bunch wheatgrass of Eurasian origin and quackgrass.
2) Intermediate Wheatgrass — saline tolerance 8.49
3) Barley — saline tolerance 8.29
4) Canola — saline tolerance 8.0
5) Wheat (durum) — saline tolerance 5.20
6) Camelina — saline tolerance 4.30
7) Wheat (hard red spring) — saline tolerance 3.27
There is a risk in harvesting and removing saline-tolerant crops from discharge potholes. What can be done with salt-laden bales?
Saline pothole rehabilitation based on removal of salt-laden forage has taken place in California for years. The forage is generally palatable to dairy cows, so it’s a win-win plan. Or is it?
Manure from California’s massive dairy farms is injected into fields that are increasingly distant from the manure source. Distance from source to field is increasing because whole depository fields near the farms have become so saline that production of field crops and horticulture crops on these fields has significantly dropped.
In essence, well-intentioned managers may have rehabilitated a few potholes, but in doing so they have significantly curtailed profitable production on whole fields. They moved the saline problem from a few isolated spots to wide areas.
