Goals: food

Edible flowers and leaves, and a magnet that pulls aphids off your vegetables.

The fastest useful tree there is — 3 m in a year, edible leaves and pods.

Plant single cloves in October and lift whole bulbs in March.

Grown from sets or seedlings; needs depth, sun and patience.

Grown for seed rather than leaf; magenta heads over the whole monsoon.

A Himalayan pseudo-grain that flowers white and feeds every bee for miles.

Big-leaved and happy in a wet corner; corms below, edible leaves above.

One corm fills a large pot and returns a much bigger one in a year.

Ground cover, greens and tubers from a few cuttings pushed into soil.

The southern staple root — a stem cutting in June is a meal by March.