Mulch & Row Cover Calculator

Volume from area and depth

Mulch volume is area × depth in feet. Four beds that are each 4 × 100 ft total 400 sq ft. At the default 3 inches that is 400 × (3 ÷ 12) = 100 cubic feet, or 100 ÷ 27 ≈ 3.7 cubic yards. One cubic yard covers about 108 sq ft at three inches — the flip side of the same arithmetic. Straw planning uses ~50 sq ft per bale at three inches, so 400 ÷ 50 = 8 bales (always round up). Deeper mulch needs more bales; shallower needs fewer — coverage scales with depth in this tool.

Straw, chips, and leaves

Straw is the classic vegetable-garden mulch: light, easy to rake aside for planting, and usually free of the weed seed load that hay brings. Wood chips shine on paths and around perennials; avoid tilling fresh chips into annual beds where they can tie up nitrogen while they break down. Shredded leaves are free and excellent but settle — plan a top-up midseason. Keep any mulch two to three inches away from stems and trunks so moisture and rodents do not sit against living tissue. If your only source is square bales of unknown origin, ask whether it is straw or hay before you spread a weed nursery across the tomatoes.

Depth choices

Three inches is a practical default for many beds: enough to suppress weeds and hold moisture without smothering transplants. Fine materials (grass clippings) should go on thinner — an inch at a time — or they mat and go anaerobic. Chunky bark can sit four inches on paths. Pull mulch back in early spring where soil needs to warm for heat lovers, then replace it once nights settle. Pace off length and width for every bed before you order bulk; “about a quarter acre of garden” is how you end up with a leftover mountain of chips or a bare last row in July.

Row cover length

Floating row cover comes on rolls commonly 6 ft or 10 ft wide. This module sizes length: bed length × (1 + 0.1 overlap) × number of beds. A 100 ft bed becomes 110 ft of fabric so you can tuck ends and overlap seams. Choose width that spans the bed plus a tuck on each side; a narrow bed under a wide roll wastes fabric but installs faster. Weight class matters: lightweight fabric is mainly an insect barrier; heavier grades add a few degrees of frost protection. Remove insect netting at flowering for crops that need bees.

Common mistakes

Mulching right against tomato stems, buying hay instead of straw and importing weed seed, estimating “a couple of bales” for a 400 sq ft block without doing the fifty-square-foot math, and leaving row cover on squash through bloom so flowers never set fruit. Another: measuring only one bed when you have four identical runs — multiply area or bed count before you checkout. Print cubic yards and bale counts on the same shopping list as fertilizer so one trip covers the spring setup.

Frequently asked questions