You Can Make & SellWhizbang Garden Totes

Dateline: 13 January 2014

A Planet Whizbang wood-and-wire garden tote.

Hi Herrick!

I bought your gardener's book last spring and read it cover-to-cover the day I received it. However, I didn't have much opportunity to do anything with the information I learned because 2013 was nuts. Then, in a flash of what I oh-so-modestly call GENIUS, I got the idea to make my good friend a couple of garden totes for Christmas (she is one of those people who has everything and/or knows how to do everything, rendering her impossible to spoil at Christmas or birthdays). And while I was at it, I made a couple for me (if you're going to make 2, you might as well make 4, right?) so that when I'm working in her organic garden next summer, we will each have tools.

So I got together with her husband one afternoon last month in his workshop and we blitzed to get them together. Final verdict (and I don't think I can state this strongly enough):

I LOVE THESE THINGS. The guy at the hardware store who helped me loves these things. My friend's husband loves these things. My own husband loves these things. My friend loves these things (she said: "Oh, those are too nice to be used in the garden").

So yeah, they're awesome.

Which brings me to my question/request: I am newly self-employed (that sounds SO MUCH BETTER than "unemployed", doesn't it?) and I was thinking of making some of these to sell at our tiny farmer's market next summer. Would that be okay?

The above letter was sent to me by a woman in Canada. My reply:

Thanks for the great feedback on the Whizbang garden totes. I would love to see you make and sell the totes. Go for it! 

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Are you looking for an idea to make some extra money? If so, consider making and selling some of these totes. They're simple, attractive, durable, inexpensive to make, and can be put to a lot of different uses. 

I've long thought they would sell well at farm markets. If you sell produce, you can also display your wares in the totes, and that would make them even more appealing .

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Complete specifications for making the totes can be found in The Planet Whizbang Idea Book For Gardeners. If you want to purchase just the tote plans, they are available as an inexpensive ($1.50) pdf download At This Link. Here are some more pictures of the tote (click the pictures to see larger views)….