Mulch, topsoil and gravel calculator: yards, bags and tons
Square feet times the depth in inches, divided by 12, is cubic feet. Divide by 27 and it is cubic yards. If your supplier sells stone by the ton, the yards are turned into tons at a figure you can change. In the example below two beds and a ring round a tree come to 3.15 cubic yards of mulch, and 3.5 is what gets ordered.
Count the mulch, soil or stone
Pick what is being spread and type where it goes: beds, round beds, or square feet you already have. You get the cubic yards to order, the same in bags, tons for stone, and lines to put on a quote.
What is being spread
Beds and areas
Length and width of each one. A new row opens when the last one is filled.
Round beds
A ring round a tree, a round bed. Measure straight across the middle. Leave these empty if there are none.
The depth and the order
From a wheel, a plan, or an odd shape you worked out yourself. Leave it empty if the beds above are all of it.
It starts empty: a depth is not ours to give. What each source says is under the calculator.
For settling and uneven ground. It starts empty, which is none.
Printed on the bag. Leave it empty to count bulk only.
Type the length and the width of a bed, and how deep it goes. The count shows here.
Two beds and a tree ring, counted
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
Say one bed is 10 by 20 feet and another 6 by 15, and a ring round a tree is 8 feet across. That is 200, 90 and 50.27 square feet: 340.27 in all. Say the mulch goes down 3 inches deep. That is 85.07 cubic feet, which is 3.15 cubic yards, so 3.5 go on the order. From bags of 2 cubic feet it would be 43. At that depth one cubic yard covers 108 square feet.
How it is worked out
- A bed: length times width is the square feet. A round bed: half the distance across, squared, times pi.
- Add every area up. Square feet times the depth in inches, divided by 12, is cubic feet.
- Cubic feet divided by 27 is cubic yards: 27 cubic feet make 1 cubic yard.
- Turned round, one cubic yard covers 324 square feet at 1 inch deep. Divide 324 by your depth for any other.
- Bags: the cubic feet divided by the cubic feet in one bag, rounded up. If your bag holds 2 cubic feet, a cubic yard is 13 and a half of them.
- Stone by weight: the cubic yards times the tons in a cubic yard. The Nebraska Department of Transportation's estimating sheet takes one loose surfacing aggregate at 1.3 tons to the cubic yard and another at 1.4.
How deep: what each source says
- Mulch. University of Illinois Extension gives the recommended mulch depth as 2 to 4 inches: 2 to 3 for composted material and 3 to 4 for coarse mulch. It says thick layers can become matted, and then less water and oxygen get through. The counter says so when mulch goes deeper than 4. The sheet is about mulching trees.
- Gravel as a mulch on a planted bed. Colorado State University Extension says that to suppress weeds, wood chip, gravel and other mulch should be four inches deep, and that more is not better. It also says stones used as mulch should be smaller than half an inch across. The page is written for a dry climate.
- Soil under a new lawn. New Mexico State University's guide to starting turf calls 4 inches the absolute minimum soil depth for a lawn and recommends 6 or more. That is all the soil under the grass, not what you bring in: measure what is there and count the difference.
- Gravel for a driveway, a path or a base. We found no depth at a source worth naming, and how thick a driveway is built is for whoever designs it. The box is yours.
A cubic yard of stone is not one weight
The two figures above are a highway department's, for the aggregates it spreads on roads, loose. The same sheet takes crushed concrete in a stockpile at 1.35 tons to the cubic yard, and takes one material at 1.43 in a stockpile and 1.66 once it is packed in place.
So the box starts at 1.4 and says whose figure that is. Ask your supplier what a yard of the stone you are buying weighs, and type that.
Mulch and soil are not turned into tons here. No source worth naming gave us a weight for either.
The order goes up to the half yard
The line for the bulk order goes up to the next half yard. The half is our choice, because a step had to be picked. Ask where you buy it how small a step it sells, and whether it charges to deliver less than a full load.
The box for extra is for settling and uneven ground. It starts empty, because we found no figure for it worth passing on. If your last jobs ran short, the yards you went back for are your figure.
What this count is not
- It is not a design. Nothing here says how deep stone goes under a driveway, a patio or a shed, or what goes under it. That is for the plans, or for whoever answers for them.
- It is not an order. A count from measurements is an estimate: a bed is never quite the rectangle on the pad.
- It does not price anything. TailGateBid has no price data, and the box for what a yard costs you is on the page that prices the job.
From the count to the quote
The lines under the calculator can go on a quote as they stand. Bulk, bags and tons are three ways of buying the same material: keep the one you will really buy and drop the others.
Next, work out what to charge for each yard installed. That page takes one bed, what a yard costs you and your hours, and ends at a price. It is written for mulch, and the sum is the same for soil and for stone. Or put the lines on an estimate and print it.
Pouring and not spreading? The concrete calculator is the same sum with footings and bags of mix in it. And TailGateBid for lawn care and landscaping has a yard quote worked through, mulch line and all.
Where each number comes from
- A cubic yard is 27 cubic feet. That is how feet of length and width, and a depth, become cubic yards.
- The yards to order are rounded up to the next 0.5 of a yard. That step is our choice, not a rule. Ask where you buy it how it is sold.
- University of Illinois Extension gives the recommended mulch depth as 2 to 4 inches. Where mulch typed here is deeper, the count still shows, with a line that says so. This page gives no depth for soil or for stone. University of Illinois Extension, .
- The box for the tons in a cubic yard starts at 1.4. The Nebraska Department of Transportation's estimating sheet takes one loose surfacing aggregate at 1.3 tons to the cubic yard and another at that figure. Starting at the higher is our choice. Stone differs from quarry to quarry, and the same sheet takes material packed in place at more than the same material in a stockpile: ask your supplier. Nebraska Department of Transportation, Estimating Quantities in English & Metric, . (our choice, change it)
On a TailGateBid quote the material is a line by the cubic yard and spreading it is a line of its own, each at your own price.
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Sources
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Handbook 44 (2026), Appendix C,
- University of Illinois Extension,
- Colorado State University Extension, Mulching,
- New Mexico State University, Guide H-509: Turfgrass Establishment,
- Nebraska Department of Transportation, Estimating Quantities in English & Metric,
Related
- Mulch installationFrom a bed's length, width and depth to the yards to order and a price for each yard installed.
- Lawn care and landscapingQuotes by the 1,000 square feet and the cubic yard, and jobs that repeat by themselves.
- Estimate makerType a few lines and print a clean estimate or quote, in English or Spanish. Nothing you type is sent anywhere.
- Job price16 hours of work and $600 of materials cost you $1,320. See what five prices would leave you.
By TailGateBid. .
A count is as good as the measurements you type. What is printed on the bag, the can, the pail or the box you buy decides, and so do the plans.