Silt from a canal drain - any use?

We are fortunate enough to have a canal overflow/drain running by the allotment - easy water source. The drain gets silted up pretty rapidly so I have a ready supply of this:




It's dark grey to black. Does not smell (much!) but probably anoxic in situ. The question is - is it good as a soil improver (for heavy clay soil) or to use alongside other stuff as general compost/fertilizer?

Or is it best dumped out of the way?

cheers all and Hi, this is my first post.

 

I would say it is clay, most canals were sealed with heavy clay anyways. You could put it somewhere to dry out, if it goes rock hard then it will be clay, which sort of defeats improving your heavy clay soil.

 

Would recommend that your allotment society get it sampled and tested, for organics and heavy metals before you spread it on food producing ground, especially as canals were built for industrial cargoes.

 

When I lived near a canal they often dredged it for the boats to get through, they dumped the stuff on the bankside and nature very quickly took over. I would doubt there is anything toxic in it now, commercial freight ended in the 1960's and that at worst would have been coal. We occasionally ate Pike and Eels we caught from the Grand Union and I know people who still eat Zander from rivers and canals. The clay was used to seal the canal bottom, the silt would be mostly leaf mould with the odd dead carcass from a rodent or birds/fish, pretty organic I'd have thought and probably less toxic than the stuff from household waste that is now added to MPC these days.

 

Thanks all. I may well get it tested but otherwise will use it sparingly with sand and compost.