“Salting the earth” doesn’t actually ruin the land in the way popularly imagined. Now truly massive amounts of salt might do that, but nobody’s actually done that. The thing about salt is that in relatively small quantities it acts as a fertilizer, so salting the earth in enemy settlements encourages plants to grow there, but without someone to actually farm the land you get wild flora instead. The desired end result here isn’t to turn the land into a barren wasteland, but to turn it from civilized territory into wilderness.
Pedantry incoming:
“Salting the earth” doesn’t actually ruin the land in the way popularly imagined. Now truly massive amounts of salt might do that, but nobody’s actually done that. The thing about salt is that in relatively small quantities it acts as a fertilizer, so salting the earth in enemy settlements encourages plants to grow there, but without someone to actually farm the land you get wild flora instead. The desired end result here isn’t to turn the land into a barren wasteland, but to turn it from civilized territory into wilderness.