Salt Burn
Leaf tips and edges go brown and dry with a thin yellow line between the brown and the green, and there is usually a white crust on the soil surface or around the pot rim. It is not a disease. Fertilizer salts and salts in the tap water have built up in the pot faster than watering flushes them out.
Disease checklist
Four things to look for. If most of them match what you are holding, you are in the right place.
What gets rid of it
Gentlest option first. For most backyard cases the first one is enough, so try these in order and stop as soon as it works. If you do spray something, the product label tells you how — please read the notice further down.
1Leach the pot
Take the plant to a sink and run water slowly through the mix for several minutes, letting it drain right out, then repeat.
Try this first2Never let it sit in runoff
Empty the saucer or cachepot after every watering, or the salts wick straight back up into the mix.
plant pot saucer drainage3Cut the fertilizer back
Feed at less than the label strength, and not at all in winter when the plant is barely growing.
balanced houseplant fertilizer4Change the water
Rainwater or distilled water avoids the salts and fluoride that make tip burn worse on spider plant, dracaena and prayer plant.
distilled water gallon5Scrape and top up
Remove the crusted top layer of mix and replace it with fresh, or repot if the crust keeps returning.
indoor potting mix6Trim the tips
Brown tips never turn green again. Trim them off with scissors following the leaf's natural shape.
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Which plants get salt burn
Every plant we cover that gets salt burn, grouped by type — tap any one to open its page. A note beside a plant came from that plant’s own entry, because the same disease can be a minor nuisance on one plant and a serious problem on another. Plenty of plants we do not cover get it too.
Plant families hit hardest
Related plants often share the same problems, so if one plant in a family has it, check the others. The largest group here is Asparagaceae, with 3 of the 9 affected plants.
- Asparagaceae3 plants
- Marantaceae2 plants
When to treat
Flush the pot as soon as you see crust or tip burn, before the salts start killing root tips.
Timing only — the label is the law
This page tells you when to watch for salt burn and when treating is worth considering. It is not a recommendation to apply any particular product. Read and follow the product label before you spray — under federal law the label is the legal instruction, and using a pesticide against it is illegal.
- Check the pre-harvest interval. Every product that’s cleared for an edible crop sets a minimum number of days between spraying and picking. Find it on the label before you spray anything you intend to eat.
- Check the re-entry interval before you or anyone else works in the treated area again, and use the protective equipment the label names.
- Confirm the product is registered for your crop in your state. This page groups many different crops together, and a product legal on one of them is not legal on all of them — state registrations differ too. Your state pesticide agency or local extension office can confirm both.
- Rates and mixing instructions come from the label, never from us. We don’t publish them because they differ by product and formulation.
Other problems on the same plants
If a plant gets salt burn, these are the problems it most often gets as well, so they are worth checking for while you are out there. They tend to appear together; one does not cause another.