I put a plant in last spring. Purchased it from my favorite heirloom site, tastefulgarden.com. It gets very large leaves, kind of strange as the leaves almost look like they are from two separte varieties of plants, but they are not. Cut a big chunk off this spring to use, just take a shovel and cut through the root for the amount you want to use - leave the rest in the ground to continue to grow. I hear that it spreads quite a bit, but I figure that we will use enough of it so not to worry. Pretty easy to grow and very forgiving. I am from the Midwest, so can't really answer some of the climate questions. Here, no problem with the heat, gets mostly sun all day, overwinters great, gets the same amount of water as the rest of my vegie garden.

I've enjoyed this thread. Some of our 2013 hits and misses from first time items were: Hits Mizuna: Comes up quickly from seed, produces abundantly and is a cut and come again veggie. Tokyo Bekana Grew very well here from seed in the spring and fall. We love it raw in salads as an alternative to lettuce. Fingerling potatoes: we grew five varieties and all did well and were DELICIOUS. Did very well at the farmers' market. Zephyr summer squash. These are very delicious and showed good disease resistance and yield. Safari zuchinni. It wasn't a good year for zukes for us, but these kept coming even after the others bit the dust. Red Russian kale. Produced very well. Tasty and tender. Moon and Stars Yellow Fleshed watermelons. We really enjoyed these. Not as sweet as Crimson Sweet, of course, but crispy and delicious. Fails Lemon cucumbers. Produced poorly. They taste fine but not worth the space they take up. Won't plant again. Burgundy okra. The problem with this is that the wildlife couldn't resist it. Deer and groundhogs destroyed it, while hardly bothering the Clemson Spineless. If you can keep the critters away, this would be a good choice. But we won't bother with it again. Creasy Greens (upland cress). This didn't come up at all. Surprising since it grows wild here. We won't bother trying again. Here is a link that might be useful: White Flint Farm

I got the same treatment from Hirt's Gardens via Amazon.com. When I posted a negative comment on the website, they emailed me asking me to remove it. They said they would give me a refund IF I removed my comment. There are lots of reputable suppliers out there. I would recommend going to New Mexico State University (NMSU) or Hippyseed Company. http://www.chilepepperinstitute.org/ http://www.thehippyseedcompany.com/

Looks like the pink & white variegated type I keep trying to grow (& somehow killing). Maybe that tuber will resprout for you...