Wrong sort of sand?

[Mike Barnes]

I have some bags of building sand left over from a construction project and SWMBO want to know if it would be OK to use that instead of horticultural sand for mixing with compost, soil improvement, etc.

[S Viemeister]

I've used leftover building project stuff (sand and decomposed granite) for plants, and never had any problems with it.

[The Natural Philosopher]

There is usually a relatively high (iron oxide? ) anyey teh thing that makes the sand stain yellow, in builders sand, but it does no harm.

Sharp sand is best, but plain old builders sand is pretty good .

I laid a lawn over a pile of it. Dies dry out a shade quick, but apart from that its fine.

[jim]

can't see why not -if it was ok to build with can't imagine what might be in it that would harm plants...

cheers JimK

[Tim S]

Mike Barnes coughed up some electrons that declared:

I'd say so. It's pretty harmless, being sand, maybe some clay and some iron oxide.

My garden has taken that, gypsum, cement, stopgap 300 and emulsion washings everywhere and seems to be mostly still alive.

Mind you, the SBR/cement washings have made the lawn a bit "firm" in one place, but the grass is still growing!

[NT]

The one issue is salt content, but it seems to be ok in practice

NT

[Stuart Noble]

I doubt if soft sand will improve the soil structure, but it probably won't do any harm either.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Even sea sand is pretty low on that, and builders sand usually isnt from the sea.

Our local stuff is alluvial, and a by product of gravel digging..or is it tother ways about?

[The Natural Philosopher]

It will if its pure clay. The particle sizes in clay are very small indeed. Amy sand works.

[mark]

It really needs to be quite gritty for soil improvement etc.

mark

[Clot]

I don't know about Amy's sand but as a soil scientist, I agree with the gist of the post.

[Stuart Noble]

I notice B&Q sell 25kg bags of "soil improver". To be fair, it's the same price as sharp sand though.

[Donwill]

Unless you're growing carrots :-D Don

[mark]

Were you able to see what the 'soil improver' was?

mark

[Stuart Noble]

Yep. Sharp sand. Same bag, different lettering