I need HOW many cubic yards of mulch??

I have a 31x70 foot fenced-in garden area that I'm trying to turn into a food forest. Using the Lowes mulch and soil calculator, to have a 6-inch deep layer of hardwood mulch, I would need more than 40 cubic yards of mulch!

Last year, it took me many, many months to finish shoveling and hauling the 9 yards of compost I had delivered from the driveway into our sandy soil garden. I can't even imagine what 40 yards would look like next to my house. Does this really sound like the right amount?

About 15 cu yds. Your measurement in feet, converted to yards, equals about 150 sq yds. Add 6 inches of height to that 150 sq yds, and you get about 15 cu yds. Cut that to 3 inches, and you're back in the ballpark of what you had last time at 7 cu yds.

That's still multiple trucks running. Don't let them dump and go, make them pull forward as they're dumping to get at least some coverage. If they can get in to where you want it placed, so much the better. Beats 'barrowing load after load with tiny tools, when you're working with big trucks.

j

40 yards is right.

31x70 = 2170 sqft. x .5 for volume = 1085 cuft. there are 27 cuft in a cuyd, so 1085/27 = 40.185...

I think that's three big dumptrucks if they're willing to fill it full (road weight restrictions sometimes limit how full they'll make it) or many small truckloads.

I'm not a math guy, but I can tell you for a fact that 20 yards does not go as far as you would think.

I did 20 yards last year, I'm going to need AT LEAST another 20 this year to get a decent depth built up because I too undershot my mulch estimate.

I would recommend seeing if you could get a dump load of arborist chip for cheap and once you are getting low have another truck come by. If you have access to back up a truck to the spot like Jim mentioned, even better! I couldn't do that because the truck would have to go over my septic leech field and that is not happening.

Timothy Norton wrote:I couldn't do that because the truck would have to go over my septic leech field and that is not happening.

I've been wondering if that would be OK when the ground is frozen solid. Seems like it ought to be. I drive my SUV over the line between the tank and the field, but I've avoided letting real trucks go there.

i use a quick approximation for calculating mulch:  1 yard covers 100 square feet 3" deep.  the math works out to 108 square feet, but for simple calculations in the field, it's close enough.  so yeah, if your area is 2100 square feet, and your depth is 6 inches...in nice round numbers, 40 yards.

there is an art to math of calculating mulch in volume to spread in area.  there used to be a couple cartoons we kept in the office.

And after all that hauling, it breaks down into wonderful soil... that is usually less volume than the mulch, so you can do it again later :)