I'm looking forward to receiving my Jerusalem artichokes to plant this fall. Since they are invasive, am planning to put them in containers for one season in order to prepare a confined root space for them next year. Once they multiply, I may go out and do some guerilla gardening with them- which is what I call planting things other places than my yard.

There are all sorts of perennial food plants that can be broadcast or planted. Remember Johnny Appleseed? Cuttings of raspberry and blackberry, currant, gooseberry and elderberry. Mint, comfrey, chives,ramps, chamomile,rhubarb; all naturalize well. Sorrel is easy to naturalize. The very edible daylilies and useful cattails are easy.

If you have wild apples, you can graft good stock onto the existing plant, inconspicuously. The large -hipped roses, like 'Frau Dagmar Hastrup', are pretty and provide food.

There is also no reason why ornamental plantings can't be food bearing.

Especially good are crabapples and quince, and there are many edible bushes and trees: mulberry, shadbush, highbush cranberry, nut trees, mountain ash.

For those who want fencing or animal and people stoppers, a hedge of prickly pear cactus, in the right climate, is both traditional, practical, and food-bearing. In colder climates, stinging nettle will do the same on a spring and summer basis, but is, again, invasive and hard to eradicate.

I think guerilla gardening is one of the answers for people with little space or arable land.