I live in Lubbock. One of the best calorie crops I grow of late are sugar beets. I plant them in September (either late or early depending on weather and rain). By next March or so I suppose you can start eating some of the leaves. They are biennial though, so I leave the first year leaves alone and eat the second year leaves from the previous year's crop. They outcompete the winter rye grass I have in my yard much better than carrots. I've eaten the root even after it seeded out the second year and it still seemed good to me. Got to really boil the hell out of it to soften it up-I have used the Rand Solar Oven before for this. I've used the greens almost every day for the last three months. Could juice them or ferment them if you're ambitious. From what I've read the leaves are very high in Vitamin K. Although, not particularly healthy, after you boil the roots and poor off the water, you basically have soda.
Sweet potatoes (IMO easier than regular potatoes) are easy to grow and a lot of calories. Take quite a bit of water, but you're further east so not as big a deal I would bet. You can eat the leaves on them too, and I'm told they're quite nutritious. Easy to store. High in Vitamin A.
I guess you're also doing trees so of course the pecan. Somewhat good for Vitamin E. That's three of the four fat soluble vitamins. Vitamin D from the sun.
I've grown popcorn and sorghum before. The sorghum had some aphid problems and I think the birds ate the seeds so some sort of netting is in store.
I'm going to grow black eyed peas (cowpeas). We grew them at the CSA I used to work at. They were probably the most reliable type of protein vegetable (not that there couldn't be others).
I'm tying skirret (perennial type carrot)-something is eating it. I'm trying groundnuts (haven't come up yet). I'm trying chufa.
