What to do with a bunch of sand?

Hi y'all, new to this site and first time poster. I'm working on turning our 9500 square foot lot into a more productive space. In the southeast corner of the yard there is a large "sandbox." It's a framed irregular box, about 16' x 12' closest to the yard, 16' x 17' on the fence side, with a frame about 8" deep. It's filled with 5"-6" of sand. Not sure what the previous owners used it for, but it looks like they ran electricity out there, so maybe there was a fountain in the middle? Anyway, It was a sandbox and play area for our little one, but the overhanging oleander dumps spent flowers on it and the dog and neighborhood cats like to use it as a litter box, so it's really just a waste of space right now.

I'd like to take out the ornamental trees lining the fence and overhanging it (oleander, bottle brush, privet) and was thinking about removing the frame and expanding our fruit tree orchard.

My questions to you fine people are: What do I do with all the sand? Leave it in place and bring in soil & compost to amend it? Can I plant fruit trees into the sand? The soil below has a decent amount of clay in it.

Thank you in advance!

If it wasn't being used as a litter box for a dog and cats I would suggest planting vegetable.

Since that is the case you can make a butterfly garden with perennials and annual flowers.

My suggestion would be to start off using it for a compost bin.

Grass clipping, coffee grounds, fall leaves, table scraps, etc will get you started.

You might find some suggestions in our Flowers forum:

https://permies.com/f/379/flowers

This forum might also offer some suggestions for that space:

https://permies.com/f/373/tips-awkward-spots

Learn glass blowing.

Stick some rocks in and turn it into a Japanese style gravel garden.

source

Only half joking Sarah, welcome to Permies! I used to love our sand pit when I was a child. It was in turns a playhouse, boat, race track, mountain range and seaside, also a nice soft place for our dog to bury his bones for safekeeping. I can appreciate though the cat litter effect is undesireable.

Can you tell if it is sharp sand or builders sand? Sharp sand is more useful for garden soil, builders sand speaks for itself, although may need washing of, ahem, organic additions before use. Have you any plans for cob at all (rocket mass heater, outdoor pizza oven, new build)? If you have clay, I gather cob is used as an addition to stop it cracking on drying.

Welcome!!

You could a bunch of stuff.
Mix some of the sand in with the clay. It’ll help allow water to move through the clay and give plants a better chance to flourish there. You may need gypsum too. Probably a good idea to test the soil first.

You could also start tree seeds in pure sand! Believe it! Also woody cuttings are perfect to start in sand.

I’d suggest looking into any suggestions  a bit deeper to find the details.

Good luck!

Thank you to everyone for your suggestions!

For now, I'm going to take advantage of the shade and proximity to my garden & drip irrigation. I'm sheet mulching part of it and sticking some wine barrels there for plants that need a bit of shade to thrive here in Zone 9b. Rhubarb, oca, summer greens. I like the suggestion of just planting trees into it! That will likely be the longer-term solution.

Hey Sarah!

Seeing as you mentioned having clay on the property you could explore building something with Cobb. Cobb is a durable building material made by combining mostly sand, clay and straw. The clay glues the sand together while the straw weaves through and creates more stability. It's amazingly strong and long lasting as long it is somehow protected from water (this can be with a layer of limestone, other finishing techniques or a roof and foundation). There are plenty of cobb houses that have lasted for centuries and earthen dwellings that are thousands of years old. As a thermal mass it regulates temperatures quite well. I've seen wonderful small structures like chicken coops and greenhouses that are made with cobb, benches and pizza ovens are also fantastic.  You might even get inspired to build a Cobbin..

   

I love these

best,
Lynne

I also use Japanese style sand gardens. Use of sand relieves tension and promotes uniformity. That is the X device, if your worried about being assassinated it’s the best device. X device is easiest way to de-radiate soil. V device protects victims, a specific gravity foot hold for them, is a wide satellite shaped dish, usually from scraping out a fire pit, with a hole dug out in center, filled with charcoal, rocks or more sand. Q device helps aquatic systems, a pit with rocks in bottom, sand top. Udevice is a pit of sand. J device stands for jointed, turned over but not hoeing ground, deregulating it, allowing it to harden, then reregulated with sand on top. Alternative a trench filled with sand is also is a J device. These act as respirators to clean scent from ground, left open. They may dry it in locations, but this is also cleaner where it can be afforded, or you can bury it under soil making in non resperating, conserving moisture. Sand promotes specific gravity, specific gravity correlating to cleaner ground conditions, more moisture when dry, de-radiating the soil. Specifically it may dry ground, but relatively there is more moisture. If your worried about drying, adding charcoal or ash to bottom helps.

We've used sand from our kids' sandbox to create a swale-like buffer in an area that was prone to puddles because it was not perfectly level with the neighbour. We topped with mulch and it does the job: water doesn't stay at the surface, but it gets captured by the clay down below, and eventually by all the trees and bushes in that zone. Our neighbour was also very happy to do the same in another area of his yard.  I assume decades down the road, all of that will mix and turn into soil.

We also kept a few bags for random jobs: leveling rocks for garden borders, filling gaps between pavers. It's useful to have around.

Sand can be good for growing all kinds of stuff. My sweet potatoes have habituated to the beach where I live and become more robust against weather extremes over the years. I get more tubers, vines, and flowers now than I did a decade ago. Watermelons and other things grow back on their own every year now.

If you want to expands your orchard in the area, you can use the sand for propagating trees. Lots of things can be grown by sticking cuttings in sand and keeping it damp and out of the sun. You can do something similar to Geoff Lawton and plant pioneer species to chop and drop later when you want to plant your trees. This will help add nutrients and structure to the sand, as well as increase the biodiversity of plants, insects, microbes, and fungi.

I personally am a fan of top dressing sand versus digging it in. The nutrients will work their way down on their own. You can dig to mix in carbon sources, but to me it is just easier to chop and drop plants to add organic matter. I'm sure you can find lots of info on here for plants that will work well in your area. Mulching will help with the animal problem as well as help retain moisture. You could also fence the area off to make it less convenient for them.

You don't have to do everything all at once either. It's common for people to take on a big project and have things come up which inhibits them from doing what they want and leaves them with less than ideal results. I remember Paul in mentioning in a podcast something to the effect that if you had the choice between mulching 8 sq ft with 1 inch of mulch, or 1 sq ft with 8 inches of mulch, that having one happy plant with more mulch is better than a bunch of plants barely surviving with less. Those are some of the ideas I think about working in my sandy soil.

sand can be used mixed 50/50 with peat moss to grow blueberries. or if you have acidic top soil mix sand/ peat moss 40%/40% and 20% top soil