Free Garden Catalogs

Can vegetable plants grow in salt water?

I am doing a science project on the effect of salt water on garden vegetable plants.

Public Comments

1. yes
2. of course. but use the correct concentration of salt! i have done it before, though the vegs didn't turn out very nice =)
3. it depends, you can grow plants in salt water, but when they are ready for the picking they will be way to salty to eat. it will probably work for a science project, but not for eating.
4. Most plants can not take salt water. There was an experiment done in Israel where they had pushed the sea back, so the soil was salty. The potatoes they grew were all ready salted. Potatoes can grow in salt. Hydroponics is the study of growing plants in water.
5. They can and will at low concentration depending on the plant
6. None of the vegetable plants grows in the salt water because the salt water causes exosmosis.
7. No it never be.
8. This is tricky! It seems that the tolerence levels can vary a lot even by apparently natural selection processes. I grow and do research on Crataegus opaca (Mayhaws) and we found that those close to the Gulf Coast are way more tolerent of salt that those growing more inland. You can plant assorted seeds from inland plants and they won't survive the residual NaCl levels that seeds from coastal trees can. An interesting study would be to see if KCl salt in serial dilutions would react the same a NaCl has shown.