give is underway , and chances are you ’re busypreparing your gardenfor planting season . If you ’re keen to expand this yr and produce more of your own food , you ’re plausibly think about buildingraised garden beds . But building bed is only half the conflict — the next step is to fill them with quality soil .
Whether you ’re take out the ground from your own compost pile or source it from another location , you ’ll need to calculate the volume of stain you need . This goes double if you plan to add amendments to the soil .
To make certain you do n’t apply too much ( or too little ) , you need to find the volume of dirt and allot the amendment accordingly .
take more : Here are some ready tips for building raised garden seam .
Grab Your Calculator
Fortunately , it ’s soft to calculate how much soil you need to fill a raised bed . Yes , it involve a little algebra , but there ’s no need to run screaming in another direction ! This is n’t the impressively complicated and theoretic algebra you learned in eminent school .
Here ’s the magic rule you need to figure land volume in raised garden beds :
W x L x D = Vft3
Confused ? There ’s no pauperism to be — this is really just a square multiplication problem . It only look complicated because we have n’t punched in the real numbers yet .
Break It Down
Let ’s explain the variable quantity in the equation :
W = the width of your garden seam , in feetL = the distance of your garden bed , in feetD = the depth of your garden bed , in fee . V = the volume , in three-dimensional feet , of soil you will demand to fill the layer
Now , let ’s interchange the variable with numbers pool . theorize your garden layer measures 3 feet all-encompassing by 8 foot foresighted , and you need to fill the bed 12 in ( 1 foot ) deep . of a sudden , the equating looks more like a real maths trouble :
3 x 8 x 1 = 24ft3
If you require to fill the seam 2 feet deep , you ’ll need twice as much soil . This is reflected in the updated equation :
3 x 8 x 2 = 48ft3
Read more : You should compost ! Here ’s why and how you could get started .
Change It Up
Now get ’s deepen up the numbers significantly . Suppose your bed measures 4 foot panoptic by 10 feet long , but you only wish to fill it 8 inches ( 0.67 infantry ) deep . So long as you remember to win over inches into feet , the formula carry on to work just fine .
4 x 10 x 0.67 = 26.8ft3
If you would wish to measure using a whole other than feet , feel free to do so ! Inches , yards , centimeter , metre — all can be used with exact termination , so long as you do n’t mix and play off different unit of measurement of measurement :
Meters : 1 x 3 x 0.5 = 1.5m3Inches : 12 x 36 x 6 = 2,592in3
This same formula can be used to calculate the carrying capacity of a police van or poke . Suppose you design to haul compost to your garden in a estate car quantify 4 feet all-encompassing by 9 feet long and 2 feet bass . If you fill this wagon to the brim ( and level off the compost so it ’s not heaping above the sides of the Plough ) , you ’ll be hauling incisively 72ft3of soil — enough to make full three bed measure out 3 feet all-encompassing by 8 foot long and 1 metrical unit deeply ( control 24ft3of soil ) .
Congratulations ! You have successfully calculated how much ground you need to fill your upgrade garden beds . Happy develop time of year !
