Does anyone, in the Organic community, know where I can purchase 5 gallon buckets with lids cheap, as in inexpensive, in the North Dallas area?
I checked with Home Depot, but they want $5 + for bucket and lid. I am looking for at least 6 - 12. I plan on using them to store the soil amendents in. I find it is much easier to pour, from the bucket into the spreader then from a bag. Also, being air tight, it keeps the amendents from clumping together, ie: molasses.

I know some you will wonder where all this will end but which is worse - storage in plastics with "out gassing" causing cancer, depression, and hormone imitation or dioxins from paper bags?
For more info on detoxifying go to www.prestigepublishing.com
Robert D Bard

Find a baker or visit the bakery department of your grocery store. They get their supplies in 3-gallon buckets with lids. They might be willing to part with some. Some stores throw them away and some recycle them - just depends.

If your molasses is dried molasses, I would cast that stuff out on the landscape as soon as yesterday. No matter how you store it, it will harden into a brick that you'll need a hatchet to loosen up again. Next time get liquid molasses. It's a much better deal anyway. Shop for molasses at a farmers co-op. The cost is $0.10 per pound which works out to be a little over a dollar per gallon.

50 pounds of dried molasses is about 45 pounds of trash corn cobs and 5 pounds of liquid molasses (worth about $0.50). I suspect you paid $5 for 50 pounds of dried stuff. If you bought liquid molasses, you can get a 5-gallon bucket filled for $5 (although you could not lift it (50 pounds)). The general application rate is 3 ounces of molasses per 1,000 square feet of area. So 3 or 5 gallons would last you quite a while.

Dried molasses just isn't worth the hassle, especially trying to store it.