Dear Dell, At my local Lowe’s home store, you can buy play sand, builder's sand and tube sand. Basically all the same as a coarse tan ‘sand. One can also buy ‘Silica Sand” that is marked as “Pure Silica’. It is finer grained and almost pure white. I believe it is used for sand blasting. I bought some for making hypertufa troughs (although I can’t imagine why.) Can’t say that Silica Sand drains better or worse than beach sand, builder sand etc, but it is definitely distinct and more expensive at Lowe’s. And I can’t think of using it to pot any thing all by itself, but I have a sand bed of 100% builder’s sand and some things do marvelously well there. Does that help or confuse? Jim On Nov 15, 2014, at 3:39 PM, ds429@frontier.com wrote: > I have heard for years that one needs to use “silica sand” for bulb potting mixes. I wonder how “silica sand” differs from other sand. I try to find very coarse sand because it is not as likely to compact. The best stuff I found was from a stream bed. But was it “silica sand?” Isn’t sand generally a silicate mineral anyway? > > > Dell > > > > > > > Sent from Windows Mail > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/ James Waddick 8871 NW Brostrom Rd Kansas City, MO 64152-2711 USA Phone 816-746-1949