Man, that sucks! Unfortunately, salt Kills all kinds of plants.. You could try and flush the salt with water, just flood the yard.. Make raised beds, fill them with clean soil, plant in that.. You should be ok with raised beds.. Eventually the salt will wash out, the organisms would take care of it, and your lawn will green up.. Generally, if something kills one plant, it is likely to kill all plants.. The best way to keep weeds out are keeping your grass long to shade out the weeds.. Also keep pulling weeds by the roots. For your garden, mulch, mulch, mulch..

Best of luck,
Joe

Oh, so sad. I remember long long ago, when I was young and beginning, I read that sand would be good for the soil I was working with. So one time when my parents took us to the beach, I took many buckets and loaded up. Came home and very gently and careful placed all that SALTY sand around my freshly planted pansies, and it spots I was planning on adding more plants. Dead, dead, dead.

If I'm remembering right it took a couple years for the rains to dilute and wash away all that salt, even though I had removed as much as I could around my plants and tossed it down in the gully, but I do remember watching as it slowly improved and planting again. How long till yours is healed ? Hard to say, lots of variables. It might help to remove some of it if it's not been too long and it has not been really washed in a lot yet. That would also potentially keep it from moving out further and killing more area.

I would not plan on planting there now, but in time, when you finally see weeds move in, it's probably safe to try some less expensive test plants.

In the meantime there's many other ways to get started gardening. First you will want to fill in the trench you have there from removing some soil. You could do a border of nice looking bark mulch, pick a color and size that looks good to you, then as it breaks down over time, it will be there to add organic matter to the soil when it is safe to plant. If you purchased the townhouse, you might want to explore garden design with some decorative pavers added around the existing patio. Google things like gardens+ pavers or such. Then click on the images option. Pinterest is great that way too. So many unique ideas.

Now for the plants, besides the rest of the yard, I love planters and a patio is perfect. There are web sites, books and monthly publications showing planter combinations. The biggest secret there is the bigger the container, the easier it is. Larger containers maintain temperature and moisture much better than small pots that can be hard to keep watered in the summer and difficult to keep from freezing in the winter.

Planters would be a good way to experiment without large commitments to color, design or cash. You may also want to check out the new summer garden magazines that focus more towards the starting gardeners, and maybe find one good basic garden primer to keep on the bookshelf and be able to refer back to when questions arise. The local area groups here would be the place to ask which basic book is the favorite reference material for others where you live.

All is not lost, and hey..it could have been lots worse. Trust me.

This post was edited by plaidbird on Fri, Apr 26, 13 at 20:30

Yep, salt isn't good. Notice no trees or weed in the salt flats in Utah. It will work out with the above advise given some time.

thanks everyone.....I think I will go with planters and potted plants just to be on the safe side. I appreciate the replies....ugh I still can't believe I did that though!! thanks people.

If you put anything on top of the salted soil it won't go anywhere until you take care of leeching it out or removing the soil.

If you put a lot on, you might want to dig up the first inch or so of the soil...which sucks, because that's some of your best quality natural soil.

If you didn't put a lot on...water the heck out of it.

You're in TN (I assume) so you shouldn't have much issue with sodium competition with other cations except for possible potassium issues, but potassium tends to be high in most soils in TN anyway.

Mix some gypsum into the top soil. It will combine with the sodium in the salt and helps it wash through the soil with rainfall and/or irrigation.

thank you all so much!

As jean001a has written apply some Gypsum to that soil which will aid in removing the Sodium Choloride. Also learn from this that not everything online is good advice. Some of it must be taken with a grain or two of salt.