Like when the Romans sowed salt into Carthaginian fields (I'm guessing this actually happened) how long did these effects persist, were there any strategies affected peoples could use to try and recover the land, and how effective was the tactic at breaking morale / spirit of the victims?
You guessed wrong, Carthage was not salted. The story of the salting of the city doesn't appear until the modern period, and is not in any ancient text. It wouldn't really have made sense, since Carthage was resettled within a couple decades of the city's destruction during the Gracchi's abortive attempt to establish the city as a Roman colony. Caesar rebuilt the city as a veteran colony, and already by Augustus' lifetime it was an important city. By around the 2nd Century it was the second-largest city in the west, after Rome herself, and may well have been the second-largest city in the Roman state. In late antiquity it was an important church center--Saint Augustine studied there and Tertullian was born there. The Vandals established the city after they conquered it as their capital
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