Plant safe ice/snow melt?

General Fruit Growing
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I’m not sure if anyone’s ever considered this before, but I was just recently thinking about what types of products I use on my driveway for melting ice/ snow. I have a number of fruit trees that are within 8 to 12 ft of my driveway, so making sure I’m not applying any products that make it into the water near my trees is important to me.

I was reading one of the safest ice melt products is made with calcium magnesium acetate (CMA), but it seems that many products blend CMA into other mixes instead of using it as the sole ingredient because it doesn’t work well in extremely cold environments, and is more expensive.

Has anyone else ever considered this before, or do you consider what types of products you apply to your driveway as they may impact your fruit trees?

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I shovel and use sand right next to the trees. you have to clean it up after the snow melts though.

Shoveling before its stepped on is the number 1 way to keep it ice free in my experience. When theres a bad snow storm me and my wife go out every 2-4 hours and shovel so its not so back breaking

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Bingo!

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I don’t see as much snow as a lot of folks on here. Shoveling is my best solution with the 1-2 decent snows I see each year. Not fun, but I don’t have to do it that often. For areas that tend to accumulate ice, though, I’ve been known to use fertilizer. It’s not quite as effective as the commercial products, but it helps and won’t hurt the landscape if used sparingly.

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Sand, ice chipper.

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Great advice for most, doesn’t really work for me.

Wife had a spinal injury a few years back and can’t really help with shoveling. She offers but I discourage it. Driveway is 240 feet long and just me to shovel. Kids are too young to help. More than 6 inches of snow is a big deal in my area and over a foot is a once in a decade event so a snowblower doesn’t make sense. We are expecting 1 foot or more this weekend. I have an ego power shovel to help but I still never get to everything myself. I try to shovel strategically, but I always end up driving over some of it. I have an ice scraper for breaking up big chunks of ice when they form. Ice melt is kind of a must for me.

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If you’re sold on putting salt on the ground, you should move the fruit trees.

I run chains on my truck to get out of the driveway when it’s too icy. Then I come back and chip the problem areas and add sand or ash. The glacier that is the unmaintained class four town road is another story: “le sigh.”

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Sorry to hear that. My mom had a similar injury when i was in high school and was wheelchair bound for most of high schooI.

i agree youdont get enough snow to justify a snow blower. You can in theory do it every couple of hours yourself. I used to do that when I lived with my parents. I also usuallt dont de ice and shovel the whole driveway, just the part I walk on. Sand will work for traction for your car if you park near the top.

You can use alcohol as a deicer but if its too cold it doesnt work well.

Flame thrower same thing (if you have one for weeds).

You can also lay down a tarp the night before.

Otherwise calcium magnesium acetate seems reasonable i just have 0 experience with it

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Oh and consider getting your wife some ice cleats like so just for safety.

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And walk like a penguin (waddle) i bet you southerners weren’t taught how to walk safely on ice.

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Not a southerner by birth. Born and raised in NY where snow and ice were more common.

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I love my Yaktrax! Been using them for over 20 years.

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Good. Then you can teach the little ones. Up in Buffalo and rochester where i spent many years they have walk like a penguin signs out in parking lots lol

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I was in Norway recently, where they use (basalt?) grit on icy surfaces. I guess it depends on what’s available to you locally, but any type of angular bits of rock would help without impacting plants negatively.

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I just picked up some Morton safe-t-pet which seems to be mostly urea. Maybe not as safe as CMA, but seeing as how my fruit trees are at least 8 ft away from the driveway, I would think it should be relatively safe for them.

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@Bigmike1116
How did the safe-t-pet work? or are you still snowed in? I normally do what you describe and shovel frequently enough that it doesn’t get too built up - but this bucketed down too heavy and fast and icy for me to do that. Was it like that for you?

I don’t think snowmelt would work on my 4" ice chunks. I’ve been using a pick mattock and then moving big chunks by hand and then scraping with a shovel scooping the smaller chunks - but all I have is a spot big enough to park (and no way to get my car down the driveway to that spot)

I’m in a similar situation to what you describe. However, at least once a year, I stay up shoveling the driveway all night - I’m thinking the snow blower might actually be worth it. I’d have to get a pretty robust two-stage one to deal with my driveway though. It’s hard to purchase something that expensive knowing you might only use it once a year, maybe.

I’ve been using ashes on the steepest spots to make them less slick. I don’t have enough ashes that they’ll cover everything but it does work. And those spots do melt a bit in the sun. So you could try some ashes to help you walk on it. A guy who came over asked about the “mess” - what he called “mess” I was pretty thrilled about, but he’s correct that it’s not exactly pretty.

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It’s hard for me to consider how to deal with so much snow for as long as you have it. I visited a friend in Wisconsin several years ago in January. Deep snow was everywhere and it looked like it was going to hang around for a long time. It was a long time ago but I remember him telling me that they plugged something into the car engine block to keep it warm and some of the tires had places to screw in tire spikes for driving in the snow. All my talk still doesn’t clear the snow from your driveways and sidewalks. Stay safe my friends, I hear that shovelling snow can be very demanding on the body.

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I physically remove what I can and then use crushed oyster shells. The sharp edges cut into ice/packed snow and embed to create a walkable surface. After the melt, I let it all dry and sweep it up again to use the next time. There is always some that remains and birds snatch that up for their crops. I don’t have to worry about salts in the garden, tracking salt inside, etc.

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It doesn’t melt ice, but I use this for areas near plants, and it works pretty well. I originally bought it for potted plants. It’s made of zeolites.

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It was pretty bad by me, but many places got it a lot worse. we eneded up only getting 6-8 inches of snow, but we got another 1-2 inches of sleet and then freezing rain. the freezing rain was limited, so we didn’t have trees loaded with ice and power outages, but it made the layer of sleet into 1-2 inches of solid ice. I’ve heard it called sleet-crete and I’ve been calling it that ever since.

The Morton Safe-T-Pet did a decent job, but I didn’t have nearly enough of it. many places were sold out by the time I got mine, and I only got 2 of the 8 lb jugs. All of the areas I cleared on Sunday got 2 inches of Sleet-Crete on them, and I used what little Safe-T-Pet I had on some of those areas. it drilled holes through the ice and I suspect it helped melt the layer joining the ice to the pavement, making it easier to break up, but honestly who knows.

The first 40 feet of my driveway is about 2 inches of that Sleet-Crete. it is shaded so it has had no melting of any kind. the next 120 feet of my driveway is in the sun, so I’ve been able to clear that for the most part. The last 60 feet of my driveway is a hill and a neighbor cleared most of the snow off that using a skid steer. unfortunately it still had a lot of ice on it and my mail carrier tried to get up the hill the next day, got stuck, and had to be rescued by my neighbor with the skid steer. I am a bit pissed about it, because the day before I told them to keep the packages at the post office and I would pick them up there when my driveway was clear, and they ignored me, and in doing so, tore up my lawn, broke a bunch of my driveway markers, and pushed more snow/ice back onto the cleared parts of my driveway, making more work for me and the hill more treacherous. I appreciate that mail carrier jobs are very difficult, especially with all this snow/ice, but if they had just listened to me the day before, none of that would have happened.

I was able to get out of my driveway for the first time Sunday, and my wife was able to get her car out this morning to get the kids to school, and herself to work. I think getting her car back up the hill later this evening might be a challenge.

For the future - I’m looking into some of the other plant safe products that are mostly sold commercially that I might be able to get my hands on and store long term like 100% CMA and 100% NAAC. Morton Safe-T-Pet does work in a pinch though, and is available at local stores by me. being mostly urea, it does have some runoff concerns and I believe it is only available in 8 pound jugs, so after calculating based on the sq footage of my driveway and path to my front door, I would need roughly 12 jugs to cover everything

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