Substrate is an important component of ecological ditches, but its application in ecological ditch have been limited even there are few kinds of it can be employed, as high salinity in soil and water that caused by cold, limited rainfall, and strong evaporation in cold and arid areas in north China. Five kinds of common materials as zeolite, maifanite, anthracite, slag and fragment of waste brick were selected as test materials in this study, and the adsorption characteristics of ammonia nitrogen and phosphorus had been investigated by static adsorption test. Three kinds of substrates with good adsorption effect were combined in different proportions into ecological ditch substrates and matrix proportion combination with the best removal efficiency had been determination. The effects of temperature, pH, and salinity on the removal efficiency of ammonia nitrogen and phosphorus were also studied in the test. The experimental results showed that the removal rate of ammonia nitrogen and phosphorus reached maximum when the matching proportion of fragment of waste brick, zeolite and slag was 1:1:3, and its removal rate of ammonia nitrogen and phosphorus was higher than 90%. With the increase of temperature, adsorption capacity of ammonia nitrogen decreased, while adsorption capacity of phosphorus increased. A significant effect of pH was observed on the adsorption of ammonia nitrogen and phosphorus, the removal rate of phosphorus decreased with increment of pH. However the removal rate of ammonia nitrogen had increase first and then decrease with increment of pH, and the removal rate of was 91.78% when pH was 7. The removal efficiency of ammonia nitrogen and phosphorus decreased with the increment of salinity in solution, the effect of salinity on ammonia nitrogen adsorption was more significant than that of phosphorus. When salinity was less than 1%, the decrease of removal efficiency of ammonia nitrogen in solution was not obvious, removal rate of ammonia nitrogen and phosphorus was about 3%. The removal rate of ammonia nitrogen was only 68% when salinity was 2%, of which have decreased by 24% compared with its removal rate was 92% when salinity was 0.