The fast population growth and rapid urban development in China have made it necessary to develop marginal lands for agricultural use. One approach to meet such land requirement is to reclaim the existing salinized wasteland through engineering measures through artificial drainage. As salt content in soils poses potential threat to crop growth, understanding the relationships of salt and water exchange between farmland and drainage ditches is of great importance for salinity control in the saline agricultural environment. In this paper, we present a 2 year monitoring study on salt and water dynamics in a reclaimed salt affected farmland area in Shaanxi, China. In 2 strip fields of 100×400m, we observed water table depth and measured electrical conductivity (EC) of water samples taken from monitoring wells, those wells were installed at 1, 2 and 3 m in depth in a cluster in each field; in the mean time, we measured the depth to water level in drainage ditches along the strip fields and sampled the ditch water for their salinity levels. Weather data analysis showed that the rainfall during the monitoring period was close to the long term average values. Rainfall pattern in the study area is generally in accordance with the potential evapotranspiration, making irrigation only necessary when prolonged dry period appears during the growing season. The monitoring data showed that the drainage ditches have effectively controlled the water table in the crop fields: the depth to water table varied between 1.69 to 2.27 in field A and between 1.24 and 2.18 in field B, while the depth to water level in drainage ditches varied between 1.84 and 2.05 by the field A and between 1.16 and 2.0 by the field B. The salinity of the groundwater in the fields, however, was less variable than that in the drainage ditches: the EC in groundwater varied between 4.72 and 7.51ms/cm in field A and between 6.58 and 11.4 in field B, while the EC in drainage ditches varied between 4.86 and 8.69 by the field A and between 1.9 and 14.75 by the field B. The greater variability of EC in the drainage ditches was caused by the dilution effect of freshwater recharge in the end of the irrigation season, when a large amount of irrigation return flow from an upstream irrigation district was discharged to the study area due to its lower elevation. The elevated water level in the drainage ditches had no significant impact on field water table depth due to the short duration. When no additional freshwater recharge is available, salinity in the drainage ditches increased with time due to evaporation concentration.Findings from this research may provide technical guidance for salinity management in the similar salt affected agricultural regions.