Mulch Calculator: How Much Mulch Do I Need?

This article is part of our Mulch Madness series. Mulch Madness is The Spruce’s gardening “full court press”—a curation of our very best tips and product recommendations to help you create a truly trophy-worthy lawn and garden.

Get an estimate of how much mulch you’ll need to buy for your next garden project. It’s as simple as taking the following steps:

1. Select the shape of your project.
2. Find out the square footage of your space by entering the width and length in feet and inches or meters and centimeters.
3. Decide how deep you want your mulch to be and select it from the mulch depth dropdown menu.
4. Mulching more than one area? Add additional spaces as needed using the “+Add Another Space” button, then repeat the steps above.

Editing Your Mulch Calculation

You can edit your mulch calculation at any point.

• Editing square footage measurements: Update the width and/or length fields you would like to change, and press “calculate” again. To add extra spaces and their measurements, press the plus sign next to “+Add Another Space.” To remove spaces, press the trash can icon.
• Starting over: To get a new estimate, select the shape of your project, and enter the new measurements. Then press “calculate” again. Note: Doing so will delete your current mulch calculation, so be sure to make note of your results.

Understanding the Mulch Calculator

The mulch calculator is useful if you’re preparing to mulch your yard and garden. Here are a few details so you can better understand how we came up with our calculations.

How Much Does a Bag of Mulch Cover?

• Mulch is typically sold in bags of 50 L or 2 cubic feet. To cover a 200 sq. ft. garden with mulch 4 inches deep, you would need about 38 50 L bags of mulch, or 34 2cu ft bags.
• Be sure to consider the area of the garden bed that will be taken up by plants, and subtract that from your calculation.

The Calculation

• To find the area of a garden bed, we multiply bed width by bed length.
• The estimate divides the total area to determine the number of bags needed.
• Once you calculate the mulch needed, we’ll provide you with the number of bags needed: 2 cubic feet bags or 50 L bags, based on whether you used the metric or imperial system.

Troubleshooting Errors With the Mulch Calculator

Please make sure that you are using the most up-to-date version of your web browser in order to avoid potential errors.

Buying Mulch by the Bag

• More convenient for distributing through your yard

• Easy to store if you don’t want to use it right away

• More options to choose from

• Can be more expensive than buying per cubic foot

• Produces more plastic that ends up in the landfill

Embedding the Mulch Calculator

If you’d like to add this mulch calculator to your site or blog, you can copy the provided embed code. Once you’ve finalized your measurements and other specifications, click or tap “Embed This Tool” to generate a code that you can insert into your website.

• Where can I buy mulch?

  Mulch can be purchased at any garden center and some home improvement stores, depending on where you live.

• How much does a bag of mulch weigh?

  A typical bag of wood mulch will weigh up to 20 lbs. However, mulch can come in different types (dry wood, wet wood, straw, etc.) and can weigh as much as 50 lbs depending on the size of the bag and type of mulch.

• How do you get rid of mulch fungus?

  Mulch fungus isn’t always a cause for concern, as fungus typically grows in damp conditions and could be a sign that mulch is doing its job. However, if you want to get rid of mulch fungus, you can remove any obvious areas of fungus. Fungus likes acidic soil, so consider raising your soils’ pH to stop fungus from growing.