What should I enter for depth?

Enter the depth you actually need to fill. For a brand-new raised bed that means the full soil depth. For a top-up, only enter the refill depth.

Why do you show liters, cubic feet, and cubic yards together?

Garden centers and online stores do not use the same unit system. Showing all three keeps the result usable whether the material is sold by bag, cubic foot, or cubic yard.

Can every result be added to the planner?

No. In v1, Plantory only auto-inserts shapes that can safely map to a raised-bed rectangle. Other shapes stay as calculation-only results.

Free garden tool

Garden Soil & Bed Volume Calculator

Work out how much soil, compost, and mulch you need before you load the car. The results stay deterministic, mobile-friendly, and ready for your Plantory planner.

Deterministic volume mathEditable price assumptionsMetric and imperial inputs

Calculate material needs in one pass

Choose a bed shape, set dimensions, and tune your soil mix. We calculate liters, cubic units, bag counts, weight, and a rough spend.

Width (m)

Length (m)

Depth (cm)

Mix preset

Bag size

Topsoil price (USD/L)

Compost price (USD/L)

Mulch price (USD/L)

Rough local defaults

These defaults follow the current locale and currency (USD). Adjust them to match the prices at your garden center.

Materials summary

Use the result as a shopping list, then decide whether you want to drop the bed into your planner.

Total mix volume

864

Estimated bags

Rounded up for 40 L bags

Footprint area	2.88 m²
Cubic meters	0.864 m³
Cubic feet	30.51 ft³
Cubic yards	1.13 yd³
Estimated weight	529.2 kg
Estimated spend	$71.71

Mix breakdown

Topsoil285.12 L

Compost285.12 L

Mulch293.76 L

Send the result into Plantory

This result can become a raised-bed hardscape in your plan. We keep the calculator output and the planner handoff separate until you choose a target garden.

The planner creates a raised-bed footprint from supported shapes. The soil totals themselves always stay exact to the calculator result.

Assumptions behind the numbers

The calculator stays honest about where the estimates come from.

Depth drives the total volume

If you're topping up an existing bed, reduce the depth to reflect the real refill amount instead of the full bed height.

Weight is approximate

The weight estimate uses typical bulk densities for topsoil, compost, and mulch. Wet material can weigh noticeably more.

Costs use editable defaults

We do not claim live regional pricing. Treat the spend as a planning number and overwrite the per-liter prices when you know the real store price.

Why this tool works

A faster way from rough idea to realistic material order

The calculator is deliberately narrow: reliable math first, planner conversion second.

Fast input

Use it on your phone in the garden center

The shape presets keep the form short enough to use one-handed while you're comparing soil, compost, and mulch bags.

Practical outputs

Get the numbers you actually buy against

Liters, cubic units, bag counts, mix percentages, weight, and cost all stay visible at the same time.

Planner bridge

Turn a supported result into a raised bed

When the shape maps safely to the current planner, Plantory can drop it into your canvas after auth and garden selection.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Short answers for the edge cases people usually ask about.