So I have (or, more rightly, my children have) cats. Cats bring with them a variety of items: fur, hairballs, purrs, and, of course, cat litter.
I buy cat litter by the bucket. Big buckets. Heavy buckets. Frankly, really good buckets. I have multiples of these and I really, really hate throwing them out because they really are good buckets: heavy, sturdy, and useful for so many things.
Side note: I also have a yard sitting on a lot of clay. It's very hard to grow anything other than grass unless I dig way, way down and essentially perform a dirt transplant. Yet I like to garden, and I like to grow fruits and vegetables: strawberries and tomatoes are my largest harvest, by far. I'm trying my hand again at pumpkins and watermelons in the back yard in a green house, I have some grape vines growing, herbs are a standard, and this year I'm giving a go at sugar snap peas and cucumbers. The thing is, with all of these, it's hard to go down, so I've decided to go up, or vertical, and to use cat litter buckets as a tool.
The buckets are pretty deep, and getting water through a big bucket full of dirt would be difficult, so I've worked out a poor mans irrigation system with a pvc pipe: A 1.5 inch pvc pipe with holes drilled through it. Putting this pipe in the middle of the bucket allows water to be poured down the pipe and, ergo, through to the plants at the bottom.
I've placed that pipe in the middle of a bucket which also has a number of holes drilled through the sides for the plants to grow out of:
I had already started the cucumber plants by seed and have had some great success with them. Starting at the bottom of the bucket (obviously, because it'd be greatly difficult to start from the top) I filled dirt to the holes, gently placed the plants in place, and then continued filling with dirt until, voila, a vertical planter.
