Two different salt problems turn up in this valley, and the second one gets almost no attention.
De-icing salt is the obvious one. It reaches plants two ways — dissolved in meltwater running off a drive, walk or road into the soil beside it, and as spray thrown up by traffic onto foliage and stems. Anything within about fifteen feet of a plowed and salted surface is exposed, and the strip along a county road or a highway frontage is the worst of it.
Accumulated soil salts are the quieter problem and they are a feature of dry climates generally. In a place with substantial rainfall, salts get flushed down through the soil and away. Here there is not enough precipitation to do that, so salts from the soil's own mineral content and from irrigation water stay in the root zone and concentrate over years. It is worse in ground that drains poorly, worse in low spots where runoff collects, and worse in beds that get light frequent watering rather than deep soaking.
The symptom for both is the same: leaf edges browning and dying inward from the margin, worst on older leaves, while the center of the leaf stays green. It is easy to read as drought stress or wind burn and it is worth distinguishing, because the treatment is the opposite of what you would do for drought.
Salt-tolerant plants either exclude salt at the root or tolerate it in their tissue. They are what goes along a salted drive, in the hell strip by the road, and at the bottom of a slope where the runoff ends up.
