How to Build Your Own Garden Cart

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Exploded view of garden cart.
Exploded view of garden cart.
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The detachable flareboards let you haul large loads of bulky material, such as these to-be-composted trimmings.
The detachable flareboards let you haul large loads of bulky material, such as these to-be-composted trimmings.
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The tool caddy can fashioned using scraps left over from the cart project.
The tool caddy can fashioned using scraps left over from the cart project.
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Plywood cutting diagram of garden cart.
Plywood cutting diagram of garden cart.

There are several good reasons why a two-wheeled garden cart is a better choice than a conventional wheelbarrow, at least for most of us. For one thing, the cart’s additional wheel shoulders the burden of side-balancing a cumbersome load. For another, the axle is located more toward the middle of the box, to distribute that weight more evenly. And the wheels are bigger, to reckon with rough, unmanicured terrain. (See the image gallery for detailed diagrams of the garden cart).

How to Build Your Own Garden Cart

Even if you’re not hauling a lot of weight, consider that the cart will hold perhaps 8 or 10 cubic feet of bulky material (twice the common barrow’s capacity); that its end gates are removable, to accommodate long and odd-shaped loads; and that its flat bottom platform makes a fine field bench or planting work station.

These days, quality handcarts are available everywhere, thanks to the convenience of mail order. And you can be sure that reputable manufacturers have taken care to equip their products with utility-grade wheels, heavy-duty framing, and durable wooden panels, to give customers every penny of their money’s worth.

So chances are you’d spend as much trying to duplicate a quality cart as you would simply buying it. It’s for exactly this reason that MOTHER EARTH NEWS researcher Dennis Burkholder took a fresh approach when he put together a garden cart designed as much for the enjoyment of the home-shop builder as for the use of the home-scale grower.

  • Published on Mar 1, 1987
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