You could paint them white and put designs on them. That's what they used in the old days for pots. I'll never forget an old nursery man telling me that he bought a beautiful azealea in a coffee can. I posted earlier about how to make your own containers using newspaper and toilet paper and paper towel holders. Check it out! Also any plastic container with holes in it. Ice cream buckets make good little buckets around the yard for whatever. I use them almost daily. The lids make good saucers. The plastic go boxes with a clear lid work well for tiny greenhouses to start seeds or cuttings in. Cat litter buckets and any 5 gallon bucket works good as a bigger pot or two together for hydoponic growing. You'd have to google that one. There's a certain way to do that. You can also use two of them with soil in the top one and make a wicking system. I can tell you how to do that if you're interested. You can get 5 gallon buckets at the bakery dept in some stores for free. I see some stores are selling them now. Car washes have 55 gallon drums they get their soap in. Coffee grounds are great for the compost pile.

thank you, Kevin. We are not so dry here in PNW. I hope if i put two cans per tomato bush, it will let me to water plant by filling cans twice a week. I'll try to make several holes and see how long it will take to drain whole can.

For what it's worth, I think a rotational system with associated rotational harvesting is a good idea, BUT... one would have to have the room for all of the bins. This is an excellent concept for mathematical modeling. That is not to suggest that such modeling would represent broad-scale reality, but rather that one could get an idea of the elements that would need 'focus'. For example: If you wanted to start your rotating system with 26 'bins', and you wanted to harvest on a two-week interval and you wanted to start harvesting in 2 weeks after start up, you would need 26 lbs of worms. That's a lot of worms. At $25 per pound - a common rate for a pound of worms - that's $650 start up costs just for the worms. If on the other hand, you wanted to start with one pound of worms, but end up with 26 bins, each with one pound of worms "working", then you would have to take the surplus from the first bin and put it in the second bin. If you got half a pound of worms in two weeks from an initial one pound, it would take four weeks to get the second bin to 1 pound of worms. (However, since you'd be adding worms at two weeks from the first bin, the time to get to one pound would be shorter. However, since you were only harvesting at two week intervals, you have a "discrete" component, and your rotational cycle would be constrained by that discrete component.) Then, you'd have two bins, each with one pound of worms producing half a pound of worms every two weeks so the third bin could have one pound of worms only one week after the second bin had its one pound of worms. THEN, the fourth bin would be started, and once it was 'cooking', you could start adding multiple bins at each two week interval. Hence the mathematical modeling comment. As with all models - mathematical and otherwise - there are critical elements. The most important of which are: 1) "initial conditions" - like how many bins are you starting with, 2) "production per unit time" - like the half a pound of worms per week. 3) "harvest of surplus" - how many are going to be harvested - not put back in the system - per interval of time. And so on... Again, I'm NOT suggesting that the output of such a model would represent reality for every wormer, but rather that the exercise could inform one of the significant components and, once those factors were known (empirically), what would happen in the system if/when hose factors were changed. Such a model would likely have a very narrow scope of application as there are so many factors that effect worm production. Unless one was willing - and able - to reproduce the exact conditions and procedures under which the model was developed, it is unlikely that the model would 'translate' to other locales and "systems". The original post was quite some time ago, and the topic has drifted a bit. Shouldn't this be a new thread? Paul

I found this while doing a search for "coffee can Santa boot". It is a pattern, but I don't know what the finished product looks like and this site doesn't show a picture. Here is a link that might be useful: coffee can santa boot pattern