Planning a garden (read: pot paradise)

My goal for the next year is to grow some more food.
Not in the sense of an all out raised beds/planters and a chicken coop type deal, we don't have the space, time or energy for that, but more a potted planted deck type deal. The deck is easy to get to so therefore easy to water. Also the deck is sunny and warm.

I do dream of days when we might have our own house to build planters on, and the energy of not being full time parents/students/workers all at once. But that is not today so I have to work with what we have.

This last summer we had a semi successful go at tomatoes and capsicums (and the herbs and strawberries from the previous year) and I kinda got a taste for it. I'm not really a green thumbed person, in fact if anything I would only be considered green thumbed if you can count green as being 'poisonous looking to plants'.
But I got a taste for it nonetheless, and although the man is more green thumbed than me, he is also infinitely lazier and hes mostly just rolling his eyes at me about my gardening enthusiasm. Quietly though, to himself - we are only just recently married after all.

Anyway. The tomatoes were semi successful. Semi successful meaning they grew really quickly and well and fruited extremely well. Unsuccessful part was that Evie thought they were 'happpeelles' (apples) and kept picking them while they were green. ZJ would then rip them out of her fingers and lob them over the deck onto the neighbours (read: landlord's) driveway where they would rot and get squished by cars. Good work kids. They also got some sort of thing, something I now think was blight. It started at the bottom and slowly worked its way up. I actually think the fruit would of been fine had they not been picked and lobbed over the deck, but we kinda gave up on them after the 'blight' reached the midway point.

The capsicums took forever and a day to get going. I actually thought they were not going to happen because they seemed to have everything going wrong for them. Also the summer sucked, it was cold and rainy for the majority of it and I am pretty sure capsicums like it hot.
Some catepillar ate half of them down to nothing in I swear the space of a day, and also the little bastard mites that destroyed our chives which had been prospering started on them (I just looked now and the chives are trying to make a comeback, hardy little buggers). But then all of a sudden the capsicums were up and away and needing to be staked. All the plants that survived (3 of 5) have fruit, although not normal sized' on them and they are still going fairly strong despite the incredibly cold autumn we are having. I should pick them soon but I want to leave them on there as long as possible - I don't know why, its probably wrong. I told you I suck at this thing.

This last year the strawberries seemed to do well too. We actually got fruit on them (which Evie and the birds took care of within seconds of turning ripe, seriously). I learned they really loved the spot they are in and also having a good weekly feed did wonders for them.  The mint next door to the strawberries went crazy well too, infact the strawberries and mint have cross potted themselves so I guess they are living happily next to each other. I tried to tuck their little creeping tendrils into their own pots a few times but they seemed happy enough so I let them have at it. I'm dreaming of mint julips in the summer.

Now that its autumn turning quickly into winter, I'm mostly trying to plan ahead for the spring. And this time I'm planning what we are going to do, properly. I might put down something that might do well through the winter shortly, but I know it is important to make sure they will work with whatever will be planted next to them in the spring, or what I do in the spring wont effect/destroy them, so planning planning planning and looking for inspiration.

Source: http://www.bhg.com