Effects of Salt on the Growth of Grass

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. Can salt have an effect on the growth of grass after placing it in your driveway during the winter to melt the snow? I will perform three different experiments to find the conclusion to this problem.

Salt stops grass from growing because it takes all the water out of the leaves and the plant eventually shrivels up and dies.

I must first get all the equipment needed to conduct theses three experiences completely. I will need three 1 inch in diameter and height round clay flower pots. I will be using ¼ cup of ammonium sulphate fertilizer and ½ cup of road salt. I will need to fill each flower pot with dirt from the same yard. One empty deep freezer to replicate winter conditions during this experiment. The last and final ingredient I will need is grass seeds.

In pot A I followed the steps for planting grass seeds (figure 1-1). This will be the only in this experiment that is unmodified during the whole process except for water. After planting the grass seed water the seeds water the pot and set aside.

In pot B I followed the steps in figure 1-1. After planting the grass seeds I fertilized the soil. This is to see what if any effect the fertilizer will have on the results of the road salt. Next I sprinkled the soil with ¼ cup of road salt and set pot B aside.

In pot C I followed all steps for pot B instead of adding the fertilizer to the soil. I gather all three pots and placed them in the deep freezer at the same time for three weeks. After the three weeks I removed the pots. I watered each pot on a daily basis for 2 months.

Figure 1-1

Prepare the soil

For planting new lawns:

• Loosen the top 2 to 3 inches of soil.

• Remove debris (sticks, stones, etc), from...