A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2006 Buckets to pick your veggies/fruits in.....

Hey all,

When I've needed buckets in the past, I've gone to Sonic and gotten pickle buckets from them for free. I always had a tough time getting the pickle smell out, but the price was definitely right!! Sadly, my local Sonic no longer gets their pickles in a bucket, so my "free bucket" source was gone!

I've said all that so say this. If you need a few 5-gallon or 2.5-gallon buckets, check with your local grocers's deli or local confectioner shop. You just might be able to get food grade plastic buckets with lids just for hauling them off and cleaning them out!!

About buckets...You can remove the pickle smell by placing dog food in the bucket...One bucket full of dog food usually is enough. I discovered this by accident. I had some pickle buckets and tried everything I could think of to remove the smell..I wanted to store some food in them, So decided to use them to store the dog food in when I couldn't get the smell out...That took the smell out of them. Check with bakeries for buckets, frosting for cakes come in them also, and most places only charge 2-3 dollars for them. You can never have enough buckets!!!!

Comfrey said:
Pleeeeeease dont' tell my local grocery store this!!! Right now, they are letting me have them for free!!!


Comfrey said: You got that right!!! I wish someone would kindly explain that to my wife. I only have about 5 or 6 buckets right now, and she is constantly wanting to know why I won't toss some of them!!

I never would have thought about using dog food to get the smell out of a pickle bucket!! I tried coffee grounds, baking soda, bleach, tomato juice, and lemon juice. When I drove an 18-wheeler, we used those to take the smell out of a refrigerated trailer that had hauled chicken and some of the blood had been allowed to spoil before being cleaned out. They worked fine on the rotten chicken blood smell, but wouldn't budge the pickle smell!

I get 3 gallon buckets from the ice cream shop for free also.

Tamara, are the ice cream buckets all plastic? Do they have lids that when put in place would keep liquid (like water) from leaking out if the bucket were turned up-side down? The reason I ask is that I might be able to use them as syrup feeders for my bees. But the lids would have to form a very good seal to keep from leaking and making a HUGE mess in the hive!

I tried all of the above also, Thats when i gave up and put dog food in one.

I have so many buckets around here, I couldn't count them all. Everywhere you look outside or inside you will see a bucket. I keep at least two 5 gallons ones by the garden gate in the growing months. I have daffodils growing in one on the porch from where I dug them up last year and forgot about them and never got planted, when I saw green leaves I said Oh...guess I forgot about those, but they are still in the bucket, I need to dig a whole for them and place the hole clump in the ground. It would free up another bucket.