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Basil is the *only* thing I can successfully grow. But I love nipping out to the garden and cutting it up fresh. What a wonderful aroma.

and i've read Basil is good for keeping mosquitos at bay. next year, i'll be adding it to some of my container plants on my deck.

Sugar snap peas - when you grow them yourself you can eat them directly from the plant without cooking - I've never been able to do that with bought ones. This was my first year doing them and I'll definitely be doing them again next year. Although I believe you can't plant beans in the same place two years in a row as they leach something out of the soil and it has to be replenished the following year (sorry for the vagueness - my first year with a garden!)

I lived in a tiny apt with a Honeymooner's alleyway view (i.e. almost no sun), but still managed to grow basil in the windowsill. Tried many herbs over the years, and basil was the only thing that would grow AND we would use. Actually, when I had a cat, one planter was for basil and one was for wheatgrass. I put a bunch of wooden skewers in to keep away the pigeons...

Parsley is a biennial. Maybe it will do better next year. I have found it reseeds itself, too.

I had a lot of success with hot peppers in containers this summer. I grew cayenne peppers, serranos, and thai chilis. I ended up with so many hot peppers that I was giving away tons of them, stringing and drying, and making lots of spicy pepper hummus and chutneys. One plant of each produced more than enough peppers and required minimal care in containers.

In Atlanta, our Better Boy tomatoes and red bell peppers were both a bit of a bust. Cherry tomatoes are on the Replant Always list.

Parsley is essential. My Italian mom keeps several pots in constant rotation between inside and outside. It doesn't take up much space, just start it indoors earlier next year.

Even though I have the space for a regular, in-ground garden (and did plant corn and beans in it this year), for the first time this year I tried some containers on our deck. I grew (or attempted to grow) tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, radishes and herbs in my containers:

Tomatoes: I started out with one plant each of Better Boy (beefsteak) and Juliet (roma). Then a coworker gave us started plants of golden and red cherry types. Being the only fresh tomato eater in our household, this was kind of overkill for me. I did like the golden cherry type, the Juliets were kind of bland and the Better Boys seemed only slightly better than store-bought tomatoes. Conclusion: Although they are fun and easy to grow, for fresh eating even one plant is too many for me.

Cucumbers: I bought one (burpless type) cucumber plant and gave it its own pot and tomato-cage for climbing. This was my big winner--it produced just enough cucumbers for me to keep up with (I'm also the only cucumber eater in my household). Will plant again next year.

Lettuce and radishes: Some bug ate my lettuce just as it was coming up, and also the radish leaves. I have always had problems with radishes--they form leaves but barely any root part. Anyone have any ideas on this?

Herbs: I planted basil, rosemary, thyme, chives and oregano. All are doing great and I plan to bring the perennials indoors this winter. Thyme was my most used herb, followed by rosemary. I have a beautiful basil plant but have not used any of it!

All in all, I find containers are great for stuff that need a little more attention than regular gardens can provide, meaning you need to pay close attention to harvest at their peak. They are also a lot of fun, and less work to keep weed-free.

I definitely will try growing snap peas next year!

Try Italian Parsley. It grows much better than curly parsley and tastes the same.
The Italian Parsley from seed grew 10x faster than the Curly Parsley that I bought a plant of.

My mom has the greenest thumb and I have the blackest, her advice to me: Plant pre-started veggies and herbs. Everything I planted this year produced something substantial. If you don't want to buy pre-started, you can make small terrariums and start your seeds in an optimal environment, away from random weather changes and squirrels!! Then when they start to sprout, plant them in a container outside.

I'm in Seattle and this is the first year for my container garden. Things I will definitely plant again next year are:

Swiss Chard because it looks great in the containers and still tastes good after sitting in the ground for 3 months.
Sugar Snap Peas because they are terrific producers, you can eat the young pods in stir fry like snow peas, and the older pods as a great snack with dips
Dwarf Scarlet runner beans because they have a compact habbit and a long bloom time and produce tasty thick green beans
Green Zebra tomatoes because they have great flavor for cooking or eating fresh, and the fruits are beautiful. My plant produced a lot of tomatoes despite having wilt (a fungal disease) and blossom end rot (caused by calcium deficiency)...worm tea and fish emulsion mostly solved the problems.

Not only is parsley really slow to get started, it's a biennial, which means in its 2nd year it flowers (which makes it turn bitter) and dies.

In spite of that, however, I always try to make room for it because it will survive the winter (at least mild PNW winters) and is an absolute treasure when you haven't planned ahead for dinner, have nothing fresh or green in the house and want to perk up pasta or soup made from pantry items. It is happy in pots, as well, and can take some shade, so it's not too hard to find a spot to squeeze in a pot or two. The patience required will be rewarded!

Yes, I keep having trouble with bell peppers in containers, but the jalapenos have done just fine and even survived an accidental lack of watering in a heat wave!

I am sticking with early girls and cherry type tomatoes.

I regret that I will stop planting edamame after two disasterous years.

ugh, I had no luck with arugula this year, which sucks because I LOVE it. Any tips?

I've taken a pledge to never, ever plant zuchinni! Every year my friends and neighbors have a bumper crop and try to convince me to take some of their harvest but I don't care for the taste. "But you can make zuchinni bread" they whine. "You can coat it with tempura and deep fry it" they cry. Yes, but after you've eaten a loaf of zuchinni bread and then deep fried a batch in tempura, what do you do with the rest of it?

This year was my first balcony garden and my results were basically opposite of yours. My basil was weak and my parsley grew like a weed. And the comment earlier about parsley coming back is true. My cat chewed my first batch all to hell and a month later, I had another little bush of it, ta-da!

I had very good luck with kale and swiss chard and my jalapenos were almost TOO plentiful, but my peas were flimsy and few and far between.

Perhaps it is a climate thing, though. I'm in Missouri. Very warm and HUMID.

@danasays - we grew a little habanero once and when we harvested it (wearing rubber gloves!) we cut the peppers up and put them into a little mason jar and filled it with tequila. When we want to add some heat to a dish, we just spoon in a little of the tequila as the spice. It keeps for forever in the fridge.

This year I did container gardening for the first time ever, too. (We used the Square Foot Gardening book by Mel Bartholomew since I had never gardened. At all. I strongly recommend the book: http://tinyurl.com/ydt3oh9)

I had good luck with parsley, an assortment of herbs (including basil, thyme, and mint), lettuces, and even some hilariously small carrots. Not so much with strawberries, and I blame myself for the failure of the sugar snap peas. Will try again next year. I'm in the DC area, btw.

I don't think peppers ever have a bumper crop here (PNW)- it's just not hot enough, long (or early) enough. We've harvested a few, but they average 1-2 peppers per plant- still tasty but means I want/need to try a hoop house on the pepper bed next year. Pretty much giving up on lettuce, can't find the right spot for it- and takes more time/patience than I'd like. Plus, lettuce is cheap at the farmer's market. Didn't have enough summer squash- so no torturing the neighbors. And can ALWAYS deal with more tomatoes- we did 7 heirlooms this year and fell in love with freezing marinara sauce.

Oh, and to the above mention of beans: they are actually the nitrogen fixers, so good to grow where tomatoes/peppers have been to help the soil recover. Good to move around all stuff, but beans are pretty low impact.

Cheyenne

@GreaterYesterday thanks for the Italian Parsley tip!

Since writing about the jalapenos they've really taken off. We have about 20 peppers growing at the moment. Perhaps they're liking our late summer Pacific NW heat!

I had great luck with banana peppers in containers this summer. Ditto on the basil. I grew mint too, and when the heat got to be too much for it on my balcony, I took clippings and put them in water in my window — and it really took off inside.

I only have two herb window boxes for now, but these are the plants that have thrived/died. Also, I live in Israel. I water my boxes every night with a bottle of water that is reused from the shower... NOT dirty shower water but the clean water that I would always waste as I waited for the first cold water to turn hot.

DIED:

Oregano
Cilantro (went to seed and died pretty quickly)
Lemon mint (it's actually not dead but it is still really small and I haven't even had enough to eat)

THRIVED:

Basil!! It's huge! I love it!
Rosemary
Chives (I'm surprised they lasted all summer, but they did)
Thyme (It has really spread and grown beautifully)
Chocolate mint (really strong tasty mint for tea)
Zatar (a middle-eastern herb)

I always had container gardens that went gangbusters (tomatoes, peppers, and herbs). This was the first year we tried a community garden plot.

Next year, we'll ask for better placement. We got a corner plot next to woods so it was very shady, and the town did not mow that section well.

We'll prob. also return to container planting at least a few tomatoes. We got hit w the tomato blight this year- 14 plants gave us about 24 tomatoes! Only our basil and herb planters did well.

We'll also continue to container plant our greens. We did not buy greens for almost 2 1/2 months.