Can Ice Melt Damage My Lawn?

Last Updated on November 1, 2025 by Duncan

Although freshly fallen snow is beautiful, it brings with it patchy ice, which can be dangerous when walking and driving.

Aside from shoveling and chipping the ice, there are many other ways to help melt the winter snow. Several solutions on the market, such as ice melts or de-icers, can help you beat the ice.

These products are highly effective when you use them correctly. However, if you use them excessively or incorrectly, the salts you choose can harm both the concrete and the lawn.

So, if you were wondering, can ice melt damage my lawn? Yes, it can. And there are several ways it can cause damage. These ways include:

Dehydrating the grass: Salt that you apply in the soil takes moisture from the grass blades and roots by osmosis, resulting in dehydration and desiccation.

This causes the grass on your lawn to turn brown, wilt, and die, even when there is enough water in the soil.

Toxicity issues: The sodium and chloride in salt products can quickly accumulate to dangerous quantities within the grass, as neither is required by the plant for growth or other metabolic functions.

They can also harm the lawn’s roots, reducing its ability to absorb water and nutrients.

Nutrient deficiency: This occurs when excess sodium competes with ions such as magnesium and calcium for attachment sites on soil particles.

When sodium substitutes for these cations, they become less available for plant uptake, resulting in nutritional shortages.

Reduction in plant defenses: Excess salt, together with the other consequences listed, produces stress in your grass. A stressed grass is unable to resist diseases and insects, and it is less tolerant of drought and heat.

You can tell you have salt damage on your lawn by having brown or discolored grass.

These signs are usually more visible around the borders of sidewalks, driveways, and roadways, where salt tends to build up as snow melts off these surfaces.

How do you fix salt damage on your lawn?

There are a number of ways you can fix salt damage on your lawn. These ways include:

Applying gypsum

Now, you must “knock” the sodium out of the soil particles and organic matter and replace it with the nutrients your plants require.

Gypsum, or calcium sulfate, is the most effective soil solution, and you should apply it at a rate of 20 to 40 pounds per 100 square feet of soil.

The calcium in the gypsum replaces the sodium on soil particles, allowing the sodium to combine with the sulfate and produce sodium sulfate.

Sodium sulfate quickly dissolves in soil solution, and you can easily flush it or leach it from the root zone.

The calcium in gypsum displaces salt residues, reducing the uptake of harmful salts through the plant root zone.

For optimal results, use pelletized gypsum in your lawn spreader and make two runs (full open rate) around street curbs, driveways, walkways, or anywhere an ice melter will be used frequently during winter.

Leach the salts out of the soil solution.

First, use your garden hose to remove as much salt from the root zone as possible. This process will remove the sodium dissolved in the water present in the pore spaces between soil particles.

You will remove the sodium adhering to the soil particles when it leaches deeper into the soil profile.

Turn on a setting akin to a rain shower or a shower head to distribute water in a natural pattern with minimal effort. The water will drive sodium in the soil deeper into the ground, where your lawn’s roots cannot reach it.

Tip: This stage requires a lot of water. You should water the entire area until water pools on the dirt. Allow it to soak in, then repeat three or four times.

Topdress the bare spots.

After removing the dead and damaged grass, it’s time to focus on topdressing the bare areas. To choose the appropriate topdressing material, first establish the soil type you’ll be working with.

The most common materials that you can use include: sand, topsoil, finished compost, or a custom-blended mix of different elements.

The topdressing mixes with textures that are different from the underlying soil causes the formation of a separate layer that significantly inhibits air and water flow, resulting in a deterioration in overall turfgrass quality.

After selecting your material, use a garden rake to remove the top inch or two of soil, then distribute one-eighth to one-half inch of topdressing material over the area. Rake the particles gently into the existing soil or thoroughly water it.

Overseed the affected areas.

Now that you’ve applied a thin coating of topdressing to the salt-affected areas, it’s time to seed new grass. At this point, you have the option of using the same seed you’ve been using or cultivating a salt-tolerant grass species that is appropriate for your lawn.

The most salt-tolerant cool-season grasses are perennial ryegrass, tall fescue, and creeping red fescue. They have modest salt tolerance, which is inferior to some warm-season turfs but superior to Kentucky bluegrass.

Salt-tolerant warm-season grasses include seashore paspalum, Bermuda grass, and St. Augustine grass.

Depending on the size of the patch you need to fix, use a handheld or walk-behind fertilizer spreader to apply the seed at the reseeding rate specified on the product label. If your seed combination does not include fertilizer, you can use a lawn starter fertilizer.

After seeding, you should keep the soil moist until germination occurs, and avoid high foot activity until your new grass is a few inches tall.

FAQs about salt damage on your lawn

Will grass regrow after salt damage?

Whether or not grass grows back is determined by the intensity of the salt damage and the type of grass. Grass recovers more slowly after severe damage, especially if the lawn was exposed to high levels of salt toxicity.

Grasses that are not salt-tolerant have a tougher time recovering. The greatest way to increase soil health and plant growth is to remove as much residual salt as possible.

How can you keep salt from causing damage to your lawn?

The easiest approach to avoid salt damage is to be cautious of your deicer usage.

Some prevention strategies include using less toxic materials, applying sparingly and only when necessary, establishing gravel buffers along concrete to protect the grass, channeling runoff away from the lawn, and cleansing the soil on a regular basis.

What are the finest deicers to avoid salt damage?

Deicing products containing calcium chloride, potassium chloride, and magnesium chloride tend to be less hazardous to plants than sodium chloride-based deicers.

You can also use sand or other abrasive materials for salt, or mix salt and sand instead of using straight deicer.

What happens when you use too much gypsum?

While a certain amount of gypsum is required to neutralize sodium salts in the soil, adding too much can potentially deplete critical elements like iron and magnesium.

If you are unsure about how much gypsum to apply, have a soil sample from the affected region tested for electrical conductivity (or sodium adsorption ratio, SAR). Then, check your local county extension office or an analytical lab to ascertain the gypsum quantities.