Kitchen Garden Forum

A salt water spray on veggies?

A salt water spray of veggies is a new one on me. I've heard of a soapy water spray but not salt. The one good thing about this hot spell of weather is that the slug population seems suddenly to have declined.

Primrose wrote:A salt water spray of veggies is a new one on me. I've heard of a soapy water spray but not salt. The one good thing about this hot spell of weather is that the slug population seems suddenly to have declined.

Well it seems to be working

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I would have thought spraying salt onto plants is sailing very close to the wind. Salt spray can be very damaging to coastal vegetation. I've seen woodland defoliated after storms. On the other hand, most of the vegetables we grow originated on the coast: beetroot, Brassicas, onions, asparagus. Brassicas have a particularly resistant waxy cuticle. I wouldn't want salt washed into the soil, which can be ruinous.

FelixLeiter wrote:I would have thought spraying salt onto plants is sailing very close to the wind. Salt spray can be very damaging to coastal vegetation. I've seen woodland defoliated after storms. On the other hand, most of the vegetables we grow originated on the coast: beetroot, Brassicas, onions, asparagus. Brassicas have a particularly resistant waxy cuticle. I wouldn't want salt washed into the soil, which can be ruinous.

It is a very low salt content in the spray I've made following the instructions given. I haven't seen any fresh caterpillars or caterpillar damage for a couple of days now and so I won't be using it again unless I see more of the blighters. But it worked.

The way I see, it the plants were under attack anyway and using this spray to deal with them short term absolutely can't do any more harm than the caterpillars and also remember these plants are in pots in the polytunnel and any salt that might get into the compost will run off with the frequent watering the plants are getting anyway. Also the amount of spray these plants are getting, isn't anything like the constant exposure to salt spray that coastal plants get.

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Going off on a tangent I managed to clean shoot a rat in my garden this morning - but that didn't stop the dog claiming it as her kill! Our little hamlet is currently engaged in a rat war, everywhere around us is the ping of air rifles...