Sharp sand, sharp practice?

Was down in Homebase this morning. Popped in for a bag of sand (came out with 2 big house plants, half-priced, 6 interesting tomato plants, ditto, and a miserable dahlia for £1 which clearly needed adoption by a loving home) and observed that builder's sand was £1.79, sharp sand was £1.80 but horticultural sand was £4.99.

I drew two possible conclusions:
*Horticultural sand is mined from one of the moons of Saturn, hence its lime-free qualities, and dragged to Homebase by a team of unicorns.
*or, Homebase think gardeners are complete mugs who have more money than sense.

Can't quite work it out. You can guess which one I bought. Yes, I paid a penny more than I need to!

 

Is sharp sand washed clean of stuff that plants wouldn't like? What was the weight of these rip offs?
I have bought 1kg bags of fine sand and 1kg bags of nice grit from our local pet shop for £1 each. As I don't need, and haven't space for storing larger quantities, this works for me.

 

IMHO most sharp sand is created equal (and is not the same as builder sand, which is .. err.. less sharp) but the couple of sacks I picked up last month from B&Q have quite a lot of crushed seashell in them, which suggests it might be a bit salty - Gen-u-wine Horticultural sand is washed & graded a bit more I suspect.

Not that it seems to make any difference to the plants, but short of tasting it I cant think of a decent way to tell the difference..

 

The horticultural stuff will be washed extra clean to make sure there is nothing that your plants might dislike. It probably doesn't contain the seashells that nick mentions above.

Builders sand is finer grained than sharp sand, so if you're looking to improve soil with it, you probably want the larger grains. I wouldn't know as despite having clayey soil I've never felt the need to add sand to it.

 

Don't be silly, everyone knows horticultural sand is gathered from the sun-kissed beaches of Tahiti by girls in Hula skirts! I've use builders sand soft and coarse straight from the bag and never encountered problems.

 

Beware of Salt in sand that is not "Horticultural" - plants will curl up their toes in that :(

"Soft" builders sand is not a good replacement for Sharp Sand.

I've got a 1-tonne bag of Sharp Sand (from a builders merchant, natch!) and I figure that the top part, at least, is salt-free after the Spring Monsoon.

 

I very much doubt any builder is going to want to use sand containing salt.
Soft sand, or building sand used for brick mortar is of no real use in the garden, but sharp sand is.
The only draw back I can think of when using building grade sharp sand in the garden is if it contains broken shells it could be alkaline, or have an alkaline effect on the compost/soil.

 

Haven't seen any broken shells in it. I will taste it to see if it has any salt. It is very gritty but perfect for opening out that claggy fibrous compost they seem to sell us nowadays.
I think I've used builder's sand in the past, mixed about 1:6 with compost and the occasional bung of perlite or vermiculite it didn't seem to do any harm, but I prefer the sharp sand. I should remember that this all reduces the fertility of the mix, I guess. Time I started feeding stuff more.

 

I`ve been in the same situation an tested , when i was building my frost hardy cactus spot in my garden , I`ve used ballast , compost and sand (as Pete suggest)....but before that I tested 3 type of sand , the cheap sand , the horticultural sand and the playground sand .
Horticultural sand is so expencive because it`s lyme free and work really well .
the playground sand look good and work really well for cactus as dry really quick.
the cheap sharp sand (the reddish color) , it actually really bad , as when it`s dry it get really hard for some reason , it`s yes cheap but not really good.

 

Would this be why I read somewhere that you shoudl always be careful mixing sand with clayey soil, because if you get the proportions wrong it becomes almost cement-like and even more difficult to deal with?