deserving vs salt of the earth

deserving

noun

  • desert, merit 

adj

  • worthy of reward or praise; meritorious 

  • meriting, worthy (reward, punishment etc.) 

salt of the earth

noun

  • A decent, dependable, unpretentious person. 

How often have the words deserving and salt of the earth occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )