Ohhh, to have space to have a real veg garden! The allotments here have 8 year waiting lists.
I very much miss that.
In the previous incarnation I had a small plot of ground on a (for all intents) vacant lot, that I puttered in. Onions grew well there, but not a lot else. I lived in an apartment with a large patio/balcony area, so I was able to set up a rain-gutters and 5 gallon bucket system that worked really well. I also had a tank of tropical fish, so weekly I would empty most of the tank water into a bucket that was set up on a stand and connected to the rain gutters by plastic aquarium tubing. (The plants seemed to enjoy the nutrients.) I put float valves in each of the gutters as well, so the plants could drink when they wished. I set bricks along the sides of the gutters (the tops of the bricks were flush with the top of the gutters) and on that I was able to sit the 5 gallon buckets. Each bucket had a two-inch hole in the bottom, into which I put absorbent material - old wash cloths, wads of paper towels, etc. - before I added a good potting mix to the buckets. The absorbent was long enough to reach to the bottom of the gutter. Once the soil was thoroughly damp from adding water at the top, the capillary action would bring up moisture through the absorbent material.
It was dreadfully hot there (it was along a south-facing wall), and had very low humidity most of the summer, so keeping the system charged up with water meant filling that 5 gallon water feeder bucket most mornings, and sometimes several times a day - especially when the tomatoes had got over 6 feet tall and had a lot of leaves. I tried to keep the 'maters' buckets at least three feet from each other, so on the trough in between them I had gallon milk jugs done the same way, and had peppers in them. The round tomato cages fit nicely in the buckets, too, so I was able to keep the garden neat enough to not annoy the landlord.
On one trough I used smaller pots and had quite a nice selection of various mints, which appreciated the shadier areas. I had watercress in one trough last year, and it did well. It had to sit down in the trough itself to stay saturated, but we had cress every few days as a garnish that way. I had saran wrap covering any part of the trough that didn't have a plant on it, to keep the evaporation down.
Some of my tomato plants lived and bore fruit for three years, until we had a particularly brutal infestation of hornworms while I was away on vacation. Typically we had families of small birds that would nest in some geraniums I also had out there, and who would dine on anything that tried to eat the garden, but for some reason they didn't seem to be around at that point. Stripped to the stems (sigh). I hate hornworms, but the birds that showed up shortly after that point took care of them for us. (Could have put a saddle on some of those bad boys. Nasty bugs!)
We were prepping to move, so I gave the system away to someone who sheltered small animals for a rescue society, so they could grow nice greens for the critters. I hope she was able to set it up: getting the floats properly set was a little fiddly.
Unfortunately, I don't have the space (or climate) outside to do that here, so we're going to try a very cut-down version here in the kitchen. I have not decided if I'm going to go full hydroponic, or use the soil method again. I have ordered a grow light, since there's no way the plants will do well at this time of year, otherwise. And the garden is going to be only a couple of pepper plants, some tomatoes, and my currently-pathetic pots of cilantro and parsley that are screaming for more light.
