i'm very lucky in that the previous owners of the house i rent planted several fruit trees, so i get to eat lots of citrus, peaches and what are apparently called "pineapple guava."
beet greens are also quite nice.
I planted two boxes outside the back door for winter: rocket, and land (American) cress, which is a great little plant: hardy enough to produce through the winter here, perennial (according to my sources, anyway - maybe it just self-seeds freely, which is effectively the same thing) and happy in part shade. I have some planted under trees as edible ground cover, but the these boxes are to be treated as annuals for winter crops.
so we get to garden year round without cold frames.
we have more problems with the scorching 40+ degree summers. i lose a batch of tomatoes and bell pappers each summer because they get sunburnt in the heat (some people use shadecloth to prevent that, but i'm too lazy to bother, since the evening breezes would blow them around).
did you ever have chocolate guavas?
when hiking into kalalau valley on kauai guavas were the most common wild food around, along with fern tips and the occasional mango.
we used to juice them with mosquito netting and make nectar.
you had to watch out for the fruit flies, though. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
