The Budget-Friendly Dollar Tree Bucket That's Great For Growing Onions

Onions (Allium cepa) are an important part of a healthy diet, boosting our immune systems and strengthening our lungs. They've also been an important cultural symbol since antiquity, with evidence of Egyptians using onions in mummification rituals, and Greco-Roman peoples using onions for medicine and athletic performance enhancement. If you want to continue this lineage of growing flavorful alliums to season your food, onions require a bit of effort to maintain but are easy to start caring for on a budget. In fact, stores like Dollar Tree offer budget-friendly, flexible plastic buckets that you can buy in bulk to cordon off your garden's onion crop in the kind of raised growing bed that's perfect for allium species.

TikTok creator @oghappycakes recommends laying out your Dollar Tree buckets with their bottoms cut out, giving your onions room to sprout their shallow roots when planted during the spring season between ¼ inch and 3 inches deep. It can take close to 100 days to grow onions from seeds, or less if you start with a set of bulbs, but the optimal conditions for onions to thrive remain the same. 

Onions grow best in USDA hardiness zones 5 through 10, planted in neutral to alkaline soil with good drainage and access to six or more hours of full sunlight per day. Maintaining soil drainage is one key reason to take advantage of these budget-friendly Dollar Tree buckets, as you can fill each one close to the rim with soil for an elevated platform. Onions need less than a foot of space to grow on average, so there's plenty of room to get a substantial crop going.

Dollar Tree's plastic buckets come in a variety of colors, which is perfect if you're looking to segment out your garden's onion harvest considering onion varieties of the same species will cross-pollinate. You can plant one bucket full of stronger onions and another full of mild, sweet onions, or even go so far as to divide up buckets of yellow, white, and red onions. 

One crucial mistake to avoid when growing onions is picking the wrong variety to grow for your area's sun coverage and soil type, but using budget-friendly buckets also offers a chance to do more targeted soil treatments. Onions require constant moisture, so water them at least once a week, and they thrive best in a growing medium with lots of organic matter and a good nitrogen concentration. Just be sure to harvest as soon as your seed heads dry out; otherwise, they may shatter and need to be sewn all over again.

It's worth keeping in mind that onions can cause health problems for house pets. But of course, buying enough Dollar Tree buckets in bulk means you aren't just limited to growing onions. Shallow-rooted plants like lettuce or a variety of herbs can also fill space in your garden, segmented out by colorful dividers. Other allium species are also good to consider — for example, check out everything you need to know to grow garlic.