Gardening Adventure - The Soil
Wow, that’s a lot of dirt!
After a little bit of research, we decided to have some garden soil delivered from a local soil company. We chose a garden soil which was a combination of topsoil, compost, and peat. Feel free to use whatever soil you think will work best in your area. However, we highly recommend that you use a local soil company to deliver the dirt rather than getting bags from your local hardware store.
To calculate the amount of dirt you need for your garden beds, use a simple volume equation. If your bed is 8 feet X 4 feet X 2 feet, you just multiply 8 x 4 x 2 which is 64 Cubic Feet. In order to convert this to cubic yards, divide your total by 27. For this example, 64 divided by 27 is 2.37 Cubic Yards.
This can obviously vary especially if you line the bottom of your raised garden bed with cardboard, logs, leaves, or other organic materials.
In our case, we ended up with plenty of extra dirt, so you shouldn’t need to round up. Remember as you are filling it that the soil will settle when it rains, so feel free to fill them pretty full or save some extra dirt to top them off after it has settled.
After a full day of shoveling, we were able to fill our garden beds. We even had enough to fill in a few uneven spots in the yard and also to give to our neighbors for their garden.
Now it’s time for us to start planning out our garden for this year!
