How Do I Calculate a Cubic Yard for Soil?

When you garden, you often need to purchase additional soil for your yard, such as when you build a flower bed or want to put down a new layer of topsoil for your plants. Soil sells by the cubic yard, so you need to measure how much you need to have enough, but not too much either. Making an accurate calculation can save you multiple trips to the store or coming back with more soil than you can use.

Tape measure
Pencil
Paper

Instructions

- 1
  Measure the length, width and depth of the area you want to cover in soil. For example, you may be building a flower bed that measures 12 feet by 3 feet by 18 inches deep.
- 2
  Convert the measurements to yards by dividing feet by 3 and inches by 36. In this example, you would divide 12 feet by 3 to get 4 yards, 3 feet by 3 to get 1 yard and 18 inches by 36 inches per yard to get 0.5 yards.
- 3
  Multiply the length times the width times the depth to calculate the number of cubic yards you will need to fill the desired area. In this example, you would multiply 4 by 1 by 0.5 to find that you would need 2 cubic yards of soil.

Ideas & Layouts for Landscaping a Small Yard

Plans to Build a Raised Garden Bed

Flower Beds & Specialty Gardens