I have made swc out of them and I've grown chard and parseley and cilantro in them. I'm using two of three again this year because they have gotten brittle with the sunlight last year and one was worse than the others. How to make them as swc?

Cut a piece of straight plastic (I bought a rectangular trash can for a buck at a dollar store and cut the sides of it for my platform)that will fit a bit further than 1/2 way down. This is the divider between the water on the bottom and the soilless mix on the top. Get a plastic tube or a piece of pvc pipe that will go from the bottom to just past the top of your kitty container. Place this pipe on the one of the edges of the container. Cut a notch in the side of the platform so that the pipe will fit. This pipe is your watering pipe.

Cut out the center of this notched plastic platform with an approx 2 inch diameter hole. This plastic platform will sit on a heavy plastic cup or container (I used a plastic peanut jar) that you drill holes in so that the water will flow into it. Fill this support jar full of peat. Center this support jar so that the plastic platform's hole is exactly over the jar. If you can, drill some small holes in the top of the jar so that you can use wire to secure it to the platform. Otherwise, you'll have to place objects on the bottom to hold the jar in place. Drill one hole 1/4" as an overflow just below the mid plastic so that when you fill up the bottom with water, you cannot overfill into the growing area.

Use Al's mix or a soil less mix to fill up the top of the container. Drill 1" diameter holes in the top (I drilled 3, but you can do 1-3). Either place an inch band of Controlled released granular fertilizer on the top of the mix like 10-10-10 or use a good liquid feeding with a fertilzer that has additional micro nutrients. I've also used a little dolomite lime mixed into the top of my swc containers as peat tends to be acidic. I'm not one of the experts on this forum so I'd wait until you get more responses.

Oh, and because of a lack of UV inhibitors in these kitty containers, they will become brittle by the end of the first season. But then, if you have cats, you'll have plenty of containers to use again next year!
~tom

I use them for peppers. I Make 3" hole in opposite corners of the top and put the fill tube in one of the others. I fill it with Al's mix and the plant two plant in the bucket one for each hole. I wrap Kraft paper, the paper grocery bags around the outside which helps make them last longer. I use a bucket inside the bucket type container. I wintered over some Hatch chilies and a couple of Jap peppers in three containers last year. I am picking them now but you can see my growing conditions are different. I have made a couple of new one for this year and are growing more peppers in them. Carnivals in one and Cumari in the other. -