Gardening Adventures
How Much Soil Do You Need?
Spring is here and it’s time to start getting your CedarCraft planters ready! You have them assembled and it was a snap. But now it comes down to the dirty work – filling them with soil. You may be wondering, how much soil do I need to fill this? You may have read our previous blog post on Soil 101 for container gardening. That post gave you some insights on why your container soil is so important for your garden planters and that you shouldn’t dig up dirt from your yard to fill your raised bed. This weekend our CedarCraft team assembled our planter collection and filled them all with a container gardening mix. We’re going to give you some step-by-step instructions on what you need to do to fill your planters. Calculate Cubic Volume First you need to break out the calculator and figure out how much soil your planter needs. You can find a plethora of gardening calculators from a simple Google search. Here’s a handy calculator on Home Depot’s website. To determine how much soil you need to fill your planter or raised bed, these are the dimensions you need for your formula: Length (in inches) x Width (in inches) x Depth (in inches) = total amount of cubic feet or cubic yards of soil. (12 cubic feet of soil = 0.444 cubic yards of soil) We’ve made it even easier for you! If you take a look at our collection descriptions, we have cubic feet of soil capacity for each planter listed: CedarCraft Cascading Planter: 5 cubic feet = 0.1 cubic yards = 77 quarts CedarCraft Elevated Planter: 4 cubic feet = 0.1 cubic yards = 102 quarts PatioCraft Elevated Planter: 6 cubic feet = 0.2 cubic yards = 179 quarts CedarCraft Urban Planter: 5 cubic feet = 0.1 cubic yards = 128 quarts CedarCraft Raised Garden Planter: 11.5 cubic feet = 0.4 cubic yards = 295 quarts PatioCraft Raised Garden Planter: 16 cubic feet = 0.6 cubic yards = 478 quarts Fill With The Right Mix Now that you know how much soil you need, you need to know what kind of soil to fill it with. Since our team filled each planter in our whole collection, we visted our local commercial soil source recommended by landscapers and contractors. We needed a lot of soil and it filled our truck bed! If you have one or two planters, you won’t need to go to these lengths. We used a soil mix with 60% topsoil and 40% compost, and then added an additional 10% vermiculite to that. With shovels in hand, we poured the vermiculite into the truck bed on top of the soil and got to work mixing! With smaller projects, you can pour your soil mixes onto a tarp and rotate. You can also create your own Mel’s Mix we mentioned in our Soil 101 post with this recipe: 1/3 peat moss 1/3 compost 1/3 vermiculite Before you add soil to your planters, make sure you have your liners in place. You will need landscaping fabric for your Elevated and Raised Garden planters. Now you know what kind of soil mix to use and how much, all that’s left is adding it to your planters. Happy gardening!
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Sustainable and Beautiful Cedar
There are a variety of reasons that people start a garden, but one of the big motivators is the sustainability that comes from growing your own vegetables. It’s both healthier for you and for our environmental impact. CedarCraft launched in 2014 with a mission to provide sustainably-crafted elevated garden planters for limited spaces and for gardeners who struggle to find an attractive, easy-to-assemble planter. Our elevated planters also help gardeners who struggle with bending down and offer an easy solution to protect herbs, flowers and vegetables from unwanted animals. Sustainability is important to us at CedarCraft. When the founder of Gorman Brothers Lumber, Ross Gorman, observed the large amount of cedar that was being lost in the lumber mill process, he took action to rescue that material and put it to good use. Trim end pieces that were being scrapped for mulch and waste are now collected and graded, edge glued and the planed into the smooth panels used to make our planters. CedarCraft is proud to declare that no trees are specifically harvested to produce our products. All material used is Sustainable Forest Initiative (SFI/PEFC) Certified and are made using 100 percent sustainably grown and untreated Western Red Cedar. New techniques used in the forest have many advantages over older ones. Instead of ‘falling' trees that may damage other ones around them, Gorman Brothers Lumber uses a harvester that holds the tree while it is cut and then carefully lays it down. Their work in the forest has improved in many areas and one of the most important is the use of new machines that evenly spread their weight so they have less impact than that of the human foot! This, coupled with a better scientific basis for sustainable forestry, has greatly improved the health of our forests. Our CedarCraft planters can grow natural, healthy food in an earth-friendly manner wherever you wish, including outdoor patios, gardens or backyards!
Learn moreIt all starts with an idea
Welcome to CedarCraft's blog where we are going to help your ideas come to life! Each month we're going to share tips and inspiration to help you add freshness and beauty to your home in creative and simple ways. We'll help you get the most out of your raised gardens for a successful harvest of herbs and vegetables. And we'll share easy design projects to add that "something special" to your living spaces.
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