Hey folks, I've been doing a lot of drywall repair lately and have been using Easy Sand Joint Compound. If you're not familiar with it, it comes in a powder form and you take a bit as needed, add water, and mix it up into a paste to patch drywall. Inevitably, I mix up a bit too much for the section I'm working on and end up with maybe half a cup of waste that I toss into the trash to dispose.
I took a minute the other day to read the ingredients list and was surprised by the simplicity of it. Picture is below, but it looks like the ingredients are:
1. Plaster of Paris (this has been discussed here
https://permies.com/t/93912/Plaster-Paris-gypsum-calcium-sulfate)
2. Limestone (may contain mica)
3. Perlite
4. Attapulgite (apparently this is a naturally occurring mineral in the clay soils of the southeast, which is where I am)
My uncultivated soil is heavy clay and runs a bit on the acidic side. Do y'all think I can add this to new beds I'm creating? Would it have any benefit or drawbacks that I should be concerned about? I feel bad wasting it even if it is only a little bit each time. It dissolves easily into water easily, so I'm thinking I'd just mix it into a five gallon bucket and pour it into the beds.
I saw a discussion about adding scrap drywall to soil here
https://permies.com/t/99983/Composting-soil-amending-drywall-scraps, and agree that I'm not sure what is in drywall that makes it do what it does. The joint compound by itself though seem to be benign.