Survivalism

I started the garden today: a packet of Tiny Tim cherry tomato seeds planted in an egg carton, and a packet of mesclun seeds in a hanging basket. I've never started anything from the seed before (except the interminable and ubiquitous avocado plants, two of which I had to move to make room for the tomato carton), so it'll be interesting to see how many come up/how many I kill via incompetence. This is how we learn.

However, it has me perusing garden sites, and I am making a short list of things I want to grow on the balcony this summer. For those not familiar with the Balcony Survivalist Garden Plan, I am going to:

1) take a crapload of Rubbermaid containers, the really deep ones.
2) fill them with dirt.
3) put plants in them, who will think this is Real Ground! Whee!
4) have my own veggies, so if the zombie apocalypse comes this summer, I won't get the scurrrrvy.

This works well because of:

0.5) The balcony pigeon screening I got last fall, which will prevent birds from coming into my space and stealing my plants like they used to. So long, suckers.

The question is, though, what else to plant?

My current list is the two I started today, plum tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, maybe tiny potatoes, and strawberries. At cvillette's suggestion, I'm going to look into chilis. My year-round indoor garden is mostly herbs, but that might be able to go out for the summer too and make room for some windowsill stuff.

This is not going to take up all my space by far.

So...anyone in the Carolinian zone...ideas? What's a good easy crop that I might not screw up too bad?