The Soil and Raised Planter Calculator provides the volume Raised Planter Shapes Rectangular Box
circular planter
Tapered Rectangular
Tapered Polygon
triangular planter
hexagon planter
Octagon Planter and associated potting or garden soil cost to fill a planter, the amount of mulch or straw needed for coverage of the surface of the planter and the watering needed for different shaped planters (see diagrams). It also includes convenient unit conversions.
The Raised Planter Calculator provides the following functions:
The shapes dictate the geometric (3D) formulas needed to calculate the planter volume.
The answer to the volume equations default to ft3, but can also be converted to any of vCalc's standard volume units (e.g. cubic meters). vCalc also has a Kitchen Units utility which converts any volume in any units to units common with English kitchen utensils (gallons, quarts, pints, cups, cup fractions, tablespoons, and teaspoons). This is often the practical solution for measuring nutrients to be added to soils. In addition to the system units, these formulas proved the volume in non-standard units including "bags". The bag sizes are based on common bag sizes used for potting soil and include the following based on a survey of Home Depot's and Lowe's web sites. That survey showed that potting soil usually comes in a few standard size bags:
To use the Planting Soil Cost equation, first calculate the volume to be filled (above), and then use local pricing or information from the survey below, to enter a unit price to compute the total cost to fill the volume with the potting mix or soil desired.
To calculate the cost of a bulk volume of soil, CLICK HERE. This lets you enter a unit price (uP) for a unit volume (uV), e.g., $360 for 2 cubic yards, and then compute the cost of a volume specified (e.g., 135 cubic feet).
The current Garden Soil Price Survey information is as follows:
This calculator can be used to answer the following questions: