In message , Franz Heymann
writes

"Nick Maclaren" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Rusty Hinge wrote:
The message
from (Simon Avery) contains these words:
(Nick Maclaren) wrote:

NM As Cormaic pointed out, builders' sand has not had salt in
NM it for many decades - at least not if bought from an even
NM half-respectable person.

They don't wash it at the quarry, and that's where I get mine from.
I'm a bit hazy about the geology side - I guess sand comes from both
sea and river sources, so if former it would surely have traces of
salt in it?

But I must admit, I've never licked it so can't say.

The tens of thousands of years that's been there, any salt would have
been leached out, whatever the source.

If it was on the surface, yes. But there is a lot of salt underneath
Cheshire, that has not leached in millions of years.

Probably only in places where the geological structure is such as to protect
it from mobile ground water.

I could very
easily believe that many such deposits are mixtures of sand and salt,
and that there are places where salty sand is an accessible mineral
(and not near a current seashore).


Franz
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
For quite some time I used to fetch buckets of medium grit from just
above the tidemarks area of the beach, strew it down my sloping path and
leave a hosepipe running at the top end. Then later I mixed it with
compost and peat and dug it into some borders. Also used it for potting.
No harm to plants was noticed.
However, I once got some sacks full of the old straw bedding used for
deep litter on shed floors for fattening cows, and used that as compost.
After its use it had been stacked five years. The particular border it
was dug into promptly decided to do very poorly for a year or three.
I reached the conclusion that it was the funny feed and hormones and
chemics fed to the static cows which "done the damage".
("Static" == meaning not moving, being herded in sheds).
--
Doug.