John-you sent me a message but no email to respond to, so here's my best effort to reach you! Keep in mind that I have only had one "real" garden. We sold our house, moved cross country, working 80hrs and just had a baby... little short on time! Anyway, here's what passed the test for me and why: Kale-this stuff is freakishly expensive and poor quality in stores. It produced well from early spring through late september when we pulled everything to prepare for the house sale. I had it under a maple tree that leafed out as it got warm so it was perfect. Beets or turnips are in the plan for next year-greens plus a great root veg that stores easy for winter roasting Roma tomatoes-lots of meat for saucing and canning. I abused my poor garden late in the season as these were coming ripe and had very good production, few splits and good flavor. I want to try a San Marzano next for better flavor. Most tomatoes were turned into marinara or canned whole. Cherry tomatoes-i planted six different ones. By far the best one was Mojo. Plentiful, meaty and super sweet. The Sweet 100 and Sweet 1000 were a huge dissapointment.I would also only do one; enough for snacking inthe garden since hubby doesnt eat toms. Small tomatoes are a pain in the tush to peel for canning Winter squash-four butternut plants provided about 30 large squash. I still have two of them in the basement a year later. Its important to be sure they get enough water though; mine are too starchy and not very sweet. But again, i abused my garden in august/sept Zucchini-i used some fresh, but most were allowed to grow to boat size, grated and dehydrated. I got 20 or more HUGE zukes in a gallin zip bag and i put a handful in any/every thing... soup, chili, sweet and savory breads, oatmeal cookies, meatloaf, etc. You cant see or taste it and it boosts the nutrition! Leaf lettuces-i did mostly a mesclun mix. If i coukd figure out which ones were my favorites i would go get packets of just those. If you only pluck the outside leaves it will keep growing. I picked from the same 20 or so plants all summer. By the end they look like they have gone to seed but are just bare stalk at the bottom and new tender leaves at the top. Once again, it would be freakishly expensive to get this kind of quality in stores Cucumbers-i did pickling cukes. Heavy producers! But we discovered that we dont eat many pickles, so this is something I would only do once every few years or just buy my pickling cukes, can them all in one day and be done! We do t really eat regular cukes and they're cheap in the summer anyway so i probably wouldnt plant them Hot peppers-on the fence. They're easy to find at farm stands for inexpensive. I dont have a good, versatile way to preserve them. But, hubby adores fresh peppers and pickled jalapenos What doesnt pass: Snap peas-they all come ripe at once, arent great for cooking (snow peas might have passed), dont freeze well, cant can them, and hubby doesnt like them at all. I ate nothing but raw peas for a week then didnt have any all summer. Onions, garlic, potatoes, carrots-unless you have an affinity for a variety that is hard to find, or an excess of space they're just too cheap and readily available. Asparagus-see above Green onions-mine never have the greens that store ones have and the white onion is always really pungent which is undesireable for how i use them Radishes-i just plain stink at growing them. Maybe it would be worth it if i coukd actually get something edible. As it is, its just wasted effort Melon-i did canteloupe. They produced well but i got 12 fruit all ripe within three days. I wound up drying them to save what i could but most of those are still in the pantry. I just dont know how to use them besides snacking out of hand. Basil-maybe it was the season we had, but it did nothing then bolted. I think i got five edible leaves from 10 plants. I also did t realize it was more of a cool season grower and i wanted to eat it with my tomatoes! Heirloom tomatoes-had six different types. All ripened unevenly so the bottoms rotted out while the tops were still green. They were also highly attractive to every kind of bug. I didnt get to eat a single one.

Asparagus between the curb and the sidewalk I'm not so sure about. The ferns can get quite large, so it depends on how "messy" that strip can get. (I put in 2 year old roots last spring and some of the ferns are about my height of 5'2".) Artichokes are more likely to "stand up straight," so they might be a good choice for that location. Tell me more about artichokes, please. We love them, but other than the fact that they're a thistle head I don't know a thing about growing them. You only get one artichoke per plant, right? Or am I completely and utterly misinformed? (It certainly wouldn't be the first time that happened!)

Al is laughing and saying he 'catches it' from everyone. However, I know of no one who deserves it more. LOL Chandra, I have my favorite way to cook it and it is easy. You can use a regular lemon or lime, but I keep products called True Lime and True Lemon, in my pantry all of the time. You can buy it in Walmart in small boxes, but I order it in bulk because I use it so much. It is a small packet of crystallized juice that is about the size of pack of sweetener that you find on the table in restaurants. I have a little plastic box that sits on the cabinet by my stove which has True Lemon, True Lime, and True Orange and we use it in cooking or just to add flavor to a dish that is improved by a little citrus flavor, like a stir fry for instance. I use it in salad dressings, and marinades, etc. I don't buy the orange, but they frequently have a sale where you buy a certain amount and they give you a free box of your choice. I buy lemon and lime in bulk and use the 'free' offer to get orange. I am not interested in the grapefruit. Now, I put a little olive oil on a cookie sheet, sprinkle on a package of True Lemon or True Lime, and salt. Then I add a little more olive oil to the top and bake it in the oven at 350 degrees. After a few minutes, I move it around and flip it over a little so the oil coats it and it doesn't dry out. We don't cook ours very long, but you could cook it any length you wanted to as long as you don't over cook it. Chandra, If you want to try True Citrus products and can't find it in your store, let me know and I will send you some samples. It is just the juice without a sweetener, but they do make a lemonade drink sweetened with stevia which will be in the same display, so don't get them confused. It will probably be in the display with Crystal Light and Kool Aid type drink mix. My daughter doesn't drink soft drinks, so keeps these packs in her purse to add to her water bottle when she is away from home. Disclaimer: I have no connection to the company, but we love the product. I rarely buy fresh lemons or limes anymore.If you subscribe to the newsletter you will be notified of all of the sales. Some of them are great. If you are interested, write to me and I will tell you how I buy. Here is a link that might be useful: True Citrus

I did do a little reading before I asked the question--I did not ask the question in a vacuum. Here are the sorts of things I found out there. First off, it does appear that it is a true tuber--I've found this usage repeatedly in academic sources: One example: (this is an entry for "Asparagus sprengeri" technically both sprengeri and meyeri are correctly classified as cultivars of the same species--A. densiforus) "Plant Characteristics: Perennial herb; roots with white tubers; sts. drooping or scrambling, 3-6 ft. long, glabrous, much branched; cladodes (flattened stem having the function of a leaf) about 1 in. long, flat, linear, straight or only slightly curved, 3-8 together, scales on main sts. spiniferous; fls. pinkish, fragrant, in loose racemes 1-3 in. long; berry somewhat 3-lobed, bright red, 1/2 in. or less diam., 1-3 seeded." http://nathistoc.bio.uci.edu/Plants%20of%20Upper%20Newport%20Bay%20(Robert%20De%20Ruff)/Liliaceae/Asparagus%20sprengeri.htm There are many suggestions that the tubers can give rise to plants: "The plants have extensive root systems with fairly large tubers, which are used in nature to provide food during long periods of drought in summer. They can be readily propagated by separating the tubers in fairly large clumps, or by sowing the seed in spring or early summer." H.G. Jamieson. Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden. November 2002 http://www.plantzafrica.com/plantab/asparagdens.htm "Asparagus Fern may be propagated by seeds and by division of the tubers." http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FP052 "Bushy asparagus forms dense patches, is tough and has long-lived tubers that resprout." http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/pest-and-disease-response/pests-and-diseases-watchlist/bushy-asparagus The final 3 quotes are, respectively, from Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden (I can think of no better general source of info on South African plants), the University of Florida, and the New Zealand governmental agency responsible for eradicating invasive plants. So it's clear they are in fact tubers. The suggestion of that division into clumps of tubers can generate new plants is ambiguous--do they assume that the actual growth points are included? However the New Zealand statement does suggest that they can regrow from the tubers--are they getting sloppy in their description and in fact some growing points outside the tubers are required? Perhaps. If you've ever had these grow as weeds in your yard though, you know how they grow tubers which send out roots growing more tubers, and so on, and that the plants are nearly impossible to eradicate (where I live the sprengeri cultivar is a horrible weed). But maybe the tubers themselves are not the source--I've never directly checked. I would admit that perhaps all of these sources are sloppy--when they say a group of tubers can give rise to new plants as a means of propagation or that plants can resprout from tubers in the ground it could in fact mean tubers plus growing point(s). I had only seen info which suggested that the plant could be propagated from a group of tubers, not just one, which is why I asked my question. If tuber(s) alone are not capable of giving rise to a plant I would not be surprised--the descriptions above are not totally unambiguous. However the simplest interpretation of the New Zealand source does suggest tubers alone can do the job and I think at this point some sort of evidence to counter this is needed.