"Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime...
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow."
— Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"
The best place for most vegetables, flowers, herbs, and shrubs is in the ground, rather than a pot. To get the most out of your planting beds, you're going to have to raise them a bit — about 8-10 inches above ground level. This allows you to turn up the existing soil and add a hefty amount of compost. It also ensures good drainage if you pile dirt higher toward the middle, and lower toward the sides.
To build raised beds, scrape dirt (mixed with compost, of course) high in a row with your soil rake, and plant your vegetables along the top of the row. Or, you can add dirt to your yard (pre-composted, most likely, from the nursery) and rake that up into rows.
Creativity is best when it comes to bordering the raised bed — use any kind of rock, brick, cement, wood or metal scraps you can find. Use all of them at once. Use your old lunchbox, wood pedestals you found in an empty lot, a mannequin arm, whatever. Do NOT use painted or treated wood of any kind, especially railroad ties. Treated wood contains arsenic and other chemicals which will leach into the soil, contaminating your vegetables.
If you have no land to speak of, there are several plants that do well in containers, as long as they are watered regularly. Herbs love being raised in pots, as do tomatoes, as long as they are supported by stakes. Cucumbers and peppers, particularly spicy pepper plants, don't mind containers either. Any kind of container will do — an old teapot for catnip, a galvanized steel bucket with holes in the bottom for roses, an old tire for tomatoes, a spaghetti pot you no longer use for rosemary, a moldy old Doc Marten boot for creeping thyme. Anything you want. Just poke holes in the bottom and water frequently. You can use potting soil, but mix it with composted soil for more nutrients.
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