What makes horticultural sand different from regular sand no salts, no lime, course grained or sharp, and large grained. Small grain sand is bad for drainage. This type of sand will improve drainage in clay or sand soil. I have small grained sand soil and it is horrible. It will get hard as a rock unless I constantly add compost. I put the horticultural sand when I got it in my raised beds. There is another one sold on ebay in the US, but it is not guaranteed to be as good as the one sold in the UK. Builders play and play ground sand are not the same thing and could be harmful. I have seen people adding sand around here that they get really cheap, but it does help them, because they got the wrong kind of sand cheap at home depot which is not sharp, has salt or lime etc... Also small granite rocks at 1/8 inch have been good for my drainage. I don't want to spend a lot of money, so I don't know if I would get this product. It would be crazy to ship sand from the UK to the US.

I wish people would realize how great it is, and it would become more available here. However, if you live in the desert southwest, I don't think it would be good to add this product, and I am not entire sure it would help clay, since I don't have clay, but I think it may help clay soil. My friend who has clay did see some benefit when he added some of my soil to his clay soil. We did a soil exchange. I traded sandy soil or clay. Since I use a lot of compost, I am sure the benefits were from the organic matter I added previously. I would like someone to try adding horticultural sand to clay and report back. If all things are neutral in terms of the compost would sand improve clay? Also the sand I traded was my fine grained sand, not the coarse large grained sand, that I prefer. Sometimes I want to buy a house with clay soil, just to test out my soil improvement theories.

Horticultural sand is most usually used in customized potting mixes, as it has minimal drainage-improving impact on inground soils.........unless you use it in very large quantities. Generally the recommendation is a 50%-50% mix of coarse sand and existing soil, which is impractical in most cases to say the least. One can get better results from the addition of OM and in much smaller quantities.

You can certainly test out your theories and report back but I can tell you it has been tried extensively before and the results were not very positive :-)

But, I can't say for clay soil since I don't have it, but there someone here who was making a test of it, a few months back, but then did not post his results. I wonder if that means he did not get softer soil, but got harder soil from adding sand? But, did he add large grained sand? If he added just cheapo sand, I don't think it would help. Hope springs eternal. I just keep testing things out.

What Kimmsr is saying is completely wrong. Building sand has tons of problems. I suggest Kimmsr read my original posts which details what is wrong with building sand.

I really love the mixture when all mixed well to 11 to 12 inches deep.

Crush sand has sharp edges, where as pit sand has rounded edges.
One "clings" the other does not.

Landscapers will take mechanically crushed sand over any others in the blink of an eye, if they can afford it.

I have used mostly pit sand that is screened well to take out any pea gravel that is over about maybe 1/20th of an inch.

This may be irrelevant with respect to horticultural use, but I do know that some applications (such as in building - mortar, etc.) they do behave differently.

I don't know that much about silicosis but I suspect it requires prolonged exposure to very high levels of dust, so adding some to your garden now and then is not going to cause disease. It's never a good idea to breathe in a lot of dust anyway, regardless of where it comes from, so use common sense.

But, I actually emailed the UK sellers on ebay to see what it would cost to ship me some, as I was curious, but they never even replied to me! I could have run a test with it.

I found out green sand is actually a clay, and not sand at all. Silver sand or sharp sand is what I was looking for under the theory the sharp edges would stop it from compacting. But, will never be able to run the test now.

I helped a landscaper switch from using sand and peat to amend soil to using some local cheap mushroom compost. It works better, it is cheaper, it is lighter. He thanks me to this day! :)

Do you see any farms buying sand for the field?

It all about soil managment. Adding just enough organic material that composts into soil so your not 'soilmining'. Filling in the nutritional gaps with synthetic fertilizer is just fine with the addition of organic materials to keep good soil health.

You will NOT change drainage with sand unless, of course, you make your soil 70% sand!

And yes sand is different. Dont let anyone tell you otherwise. Play sand or sand from the beach is round, sand for horticulture is large and sharp edged which will allow for macropores. Good news is, sand is notneeded. If you are considering buying sand, you may want to just buy compost. You want drainage? Adding compost will do just that by increasing the activity in the soil.

It does little good to use these materials if you're looking to improve aeration or drainage, unless you combine them, with like-size material. Mixing BB-size sand 50/50 with peat or compost leaves you with the same drainage/aeration characteristics as the the finer material alone, but you do reduce o/a water retention by adding material that lacks internal porosity (hort sand).

Here's the soil I use for all my long-term plantings - houseplants, succulents, bonsai, material I'm growing on as future bonsai .......

The material(s) you're looking for are out there - I buy it by the pallet - you just need to know where to look. Turface MVP is one of the mainstay's of my soils. You can find that at any of the Ewing Irrigation outlets near you. You should be able to find Manna-Pro poultry/chick grit (crushed granite - 2 sizes) at farm supply or rural feed stores.

Let me know if you want more info/discussion about soils and how to make them work FOR you.

Al

Good point. So, adding say, 20% sand wont work then. Adding 30% sand wont work then. Hmmm, so really, you would need to make your soil 70% sand for it to have any effect on drainage. Well, thats good to know. Anyone planning on using sand in the garden just needs to make the soil have 70% sand for it have any real effect. Thats easy, right? :)