One bed plan, all the garden math
Measure once. Plan the whole little plot.
Tell us about one bed or group of matching containers, choose what you want to grow, and add the assumptions you trust. Your soil, spacing, seed, harvest, value, and watering estimates will all use that same project—no copy-and-paste gardening required.
Your reusable starting point
Garden Projects
Choose a saved bed plan or start a new one. One selection feeds every calculator below.
Checking this browser for saved garden projects…
Guided setup
Build this Garden Project once
You can move between steps without losing entries. Use Tab and Shift+Tab as usual; step changes place focus on the new heading.
Shared results
My garden bed
Custom crop. Ranges update from the shared fields above, including unsaved edits.
Usable area
32 sq ft usableAfter the unusable-space allowance.
Soil
32–35.2 cubic feet1.1–1.4 cubic yards, or about 22–24 bags.
Plants that fit
Add mature crop spacingA simple grid, not an intensive-spacing prescription.
Seeds
Seed quantity follows plant capacityUses your germination, establishment, and overage.
Approximate harvest
Add your crop yield rangeWeather and variety can change this substantially.
Estimated net value
Add your own price and costsNo live grocery prices or promised savings.
Watering starting range
24.5–37.5 gallons/weekArea-based only; check the root zone and current local guidance.
A useful first draft, not a guarantee. These formulas do not know your exact cultivar, microclimate, pests, soil, packet quality, live rainfall, store price, or gardening luck. Keep the ranges broad and replace placeholders with sources you trust.
Area and soil volume
How much growing space and soil?
Planning range
32–35.2 cubic feet1.1–1.4 cubic yards, or about 22–24 bags.
Friendly formulalength × width × depth in feet × number of beds
Assumptions, rounding, and reality checks
Rounding: Volume ranges are rounded outward to the nearest 0.1 cubic foot or cubic yard; bag counts round up.
- The lower value is the geometric volume; the upper value adds 10% for settling and small fill losses.
- Dimensions describe the inside area being filled, and the depth is uniform across the bed.
- Bag labels use cubic feet; bulk-soil suppliers commonly quote cubic yards (27 cubic feet per cubic yard).
Plant spacing
How many plants fit?
Use the seed packet or locally reviewed crop guidance; no crop spacing is guessed.
Still needed: closer plant spacing, wider plant spacing, closer row spacing, wider row spacing.
Seeds or starts
How many should you plan for?
Complete the crop-spacing assumptions first.
Still needed: closer plant spacing, wider plant spacing, closer row spacing, wider row spacing.
Harvest range
What might the bed yield?
Use a cultivar/local source. Maturity days are not a yield quantity.
Still needed: closer plant spacing, wider plant spacing, closer row spacing, wider row spacing, yield low per plant, yield high per plant.
Garden value
What might that harvest replace?
No live grocery price is fetched. Enter a comparable local price and the costs you want counted.
Still needed: closer plant spacing, wider plant spacing, closer row spacing, wider row spacing, yield low per plant, yield high per plant, local price low, local price high.
Watering estimate
What is an area-based starting range?
Planning range
24.5–37.5 gallons/week12–19 gallons per event with the selected schedule.
Friendly formulamax(weekly target − effective rainfall, 0) × area × 0.623 ÷ application efficiency
Assumptions, rounding, and reality checks
Rounding: Weekly gallons are rounded outward in 0.5-gallon increments; per-event gallons use 0.5-gallon increments.
- The planning target is 1–1.5 inches per week, less 0 inches of effective rainfall.
- One inch over one square foot is approximately 0.623 gallons; 80% of applied water is assumed to reach the bed.
- The weekly amount is split across 2 watering events.
Before you act on it
- Check soil moisture and current local guidance before watering; containers, new seedlings, sandy soil, wind, and extreme heat may need a different approach.
- No crop-specific modifier is applied because the reviewed dataset does not provide one.