There's a lot at stake in vegetable gardens this year -- new gardeners have seized the moment to plant kitchen-garden favorites, and they're eager to experience the delicious taste of success.

Sales of both seed packets and small transplant-sized starts of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash and other summer vegetables soared this spring as stay-at-home and safe-at-home guidelines changed the way we all live and work. Sheltering in place turned out to be the inspiration for so many new vegetable gardens that the National Garden Bureau, which is celebrating 100 years of promoting home gardening, launched a modern Victory Garden campaign based on the World War II backyard-gardening initiative.

The NGB's founder, James Burdett, wrote the original Victory Garden manual back in 1943, and "it just seemed like a natural for us" to take up the cause again, says Diane Blazek, executive director of NGB and its sister organization, All-America Selections, which tests new vegetable and flower varieties and recognizes top performers with AAS awards. More than anything, she says, "we want people to be successful."

Success can be measured in many ways. Nothing tastes better than a just-picked tomato you eat right out of your hand in your own backyard. A fistful of green beans you've grown yourself is more delicious than any bean you can buy. But tending a vegetable garden also gives you an excuse to step away from all the demands on us, even at the best of times, and cultivate a relationship with nature. Over the course of the summer, your emotional harvests may include the thrill of seeing tiny seedlings emerge from the soil, the wonder of finding the first fruits on a squash plant, and the delight of pulling home-grown carrots out of the ground.

In the 1940s, backyard gardens were quite large, and families -- on average -- grew almost 40% of the fruits and vegetables they ate. But you don't need a 60-foot row of corn, kale or potatoes to earn your modern gardening chops. Even in a small garden, you can produce a gratifyingly impressive harvest. Try planting lettuce in a hanging basket, tomatoes or squash in a big pot on the patio, or cucumbers to grow up a trellis against the garage wall. Make room for parsley around the edge of a flower garden and grow dill among a patch of zinnias. On a balcony, you can grow strawberries, radishes or cherry tomatoes.

Gardeners always have questions, and the National Garden Bureau is helping gardeners with extra support from plant breeders and other expert vegetable gardeners this year, including advice on growing tomatoes, peppers, melons, strawberries, and other favorites. The NBG's website is full of inspiration, advice, encouragement, ideas, recommendations and links to planning tools for gardeners at every level of experience. All-America Selections emphasizes modern hybrids. Heirloom varieties are popular for their great flavor, but new hybrids often have heirloom flavor built in, and they resist diseases better and are much more productive than older varieties, Blazek says. Staying up to date with hybrids gives you an edge.

Seed suppliers, including Burpee, Johnny's Selected Seeds, Territorial Seed Co. and others, also have articles on their websites to address gardeners' questions and coach them through the growing season to a successful and satisfying harvest. Bonnie Plants, whose vegetable transplants of all kinds are commonly available at big-box stores, has well-researched garden guides for individual crops on its website, as well as ideas for small gardens, edible landscaping and raised-bed gardening, among other topics. Local garden shops, community gardens and university extension offices, with their master gardener hotlines, are also ready and eager to help. This is an opportunity they don't want to miss.

In her own small urban garden in the Chicago area, Blazek grows half a dozen different tomato plants, varieties she can't find in local grocery stores or even at farmer's markets. "I plant some of the unique things," she says, such as orange tomatoes and super-sweet cherry and grape tomatoes. She likes "cool, Mad Hatter-shaped peppers" and plants lots of arugula -- reminding herself every year that the crop really needs to be thinned out ruthlessly to produce lots of big, delicious, leaves.

Blazek also grows flowers for pollinator insects, like bees and butterflies and a million other bugs, which in turn enhance the yield of her vegetable garden. Pollinators are nature's heroes. Flowers obviously also make her garden more beautiful.

Every gardener experiences occasional setbacks, but "usually, if something goes wrong, you shouldn't blame yourself," Blazek says. A green thumb isn't a prerequisite for success, and there is help around every corner. This year, in particular, the investment in a package of seeds, a few small plants and some time to tend them has never seemed more promising.

SOURCES

-- No one gardens alone: Friendly, expert help for vegetable gardeners at every level of experience is just a few clicks away. The National Garden Bureau (ngb.org) and All-America Selections (all-americaselections.org) are great places to start.

-- These mail-order seed companies (and many others) also stock their websites with planning ideas and growing tips: Territorial Seed Company (territorialseed.com), Burpee (burpee.com), Johnny's Selected Seeds (johnnyseeds.com).

-- Bonnie Plants sells garden-ready transplants at big-box stores. The company has particularly good "how to grow" and general gardening sections on its website (bonnieplants.com).

-- Blogs can be another excellent source of support and inspiration. You might start with the websites of Megan Cain (creativevegetablegardener.com) and Doug Oster (dougoster.com). Cain and Oster are both experienced gardeners, and their advice is thoughtful, reliable and encouraging.

The world needs pollinators, but pollinators need our help, too, and the easiest, most satisfying and beautiful way to come to the rescue of declining insect populations is to plant flowers. In a pot on a patio or on a sprawling country estate, you can make a big difference.

It's not the size of a garden that matters, says Jared Barnes, a horticulture professor at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, and a champion of pollinators. "What if we all had pollinator plants in our yards?" he says. "What if everyone was doing this? If we are all doing small things, it can have a drastic impact."

The ripple effect of gardening for pollinators in a neighborhood, a region or across the country is profound, Barnes says. As populations of bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, and other pollinators recover, gardens turn into naturally balanced ecosystems. They produce more flowers and fruits -- and have fewer pests -- than gardens intensively managed with an arsenal of chemicals.

Barnes' research and practices are backed -- not coincidentally -- by the enthusiastic anecdotal observations of gardeners everywhere, and by the numbers. The Xerces Society, which supports pollinator conservation around the world, notes that more than 85% of the world's flowering plants, including more than 100 crops, depend on pollinators. By restoring habitat and reducing the use of pesticides and herbicides, gardeners can come to the rescue of declining insect populations, which have an economic value of about $3 billion in the United States alone, the Society says.

In his presentations to garden groups and garden designers, Barnes does more than advocate for pollinators: He emphasizes the pleasures and rewards of gardening, "the sense of wonder and awe that there is a world out there bigger and greater than all of us," he says. "It's a little miracle that we can plant plants in our gardens and see butterflies. It's a wonderful thing for all of us to participate in."

Barnes' favorite pollinator plants are easy to find in garden shops, easy to grow and naturally beautiful. Rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccafolium) is a North American native plant with bristly globe-shaped flowers that stand 3 to 4 feet tall in a garden. They're native prairie plants, sturdy and undemanding. "Everybody should have them," Barnes says -- along with other tough but beautiful perennials such as yarrow, mountain mint (Pycnanthemum), and milkweed (Asclepias) for butterflies.

A pollinator garden Barnes designed on the Stephen F. Austin campus includes these favorites, planted together with salvias, lilies, coneflowers, alliums, goldenrods, asters and other hard-working perennials. There's something blooming in the garden from spring through fall.

In his own garden at home, Barnes is working on new flower beds modeled after best-practice research on attracting monarch butterflies. The research takes as given that milkweed plants are critical for monarchs (they are the only food of monarch caterpillars and are excellent nectar plants for monarch butterflies and other pollinators), but it also demonstrates that where these plants are placed in a flower-bed design has a direct effect on the ability of butterflies to find them. For best results with monarchs, milkweed should be planted around the outside of a bed, not scattered, cottage-garden style, among the hurly-burly company of flowers like zinnias and tithonias, even though these other plants are very attractive to pollinators in general.

A border planting of milkweed will attract up to four times the number of monarch butterflies as gardens in which milkweeds are mixed among other flowers, the research shows. To make milkweeds even easier to see from butterfly level, don't let other plants flop over on them, Barnes says. Give every plant the space it needs, and make sure your planting design takes mature height into consideration.

Butterflies, and especially monarchs, "are the poster child of this love-of-insects movement," Barnes says, and the drawing card for his presentations on pollinators. When you make your garden beds, flowerpots and kitchen garden pollinator friendly, you'll surely notice an increase in the number and diversity of butterflies in your yard. What you might not see are all the different bees and flies that also contribute to the business of pollinating flowers and fruit, but these tiny insects are there, and they are doing you and us all a world of good.

SOURCES

-- The Xerces Society's website (xerces.org) has many resources for gardeners, including information about pollinators, pollinator gardens and plant lists of recommended pollinator plants for your region.

-- For more about Jared Barnes and his interests in horticulture, nature, and gardening, check his website (meristemhorticulture.com).

A row of bright flowers in a kitchen garden isn't just an ornamental gesture. Colorful blooms attract pollinators to the whole plot and increase the productivity of any vegetable garden. They also have a place at the table: in salads, soups, drinks and desserts.

Edible flowers are no longer an exotic novelty. Sparkling nasturtiums, golden calendulas and mini violas "are riding the wave of increased interest in salads and microgreens, baking, and -- not least -- craft cocktails," says Hillary Alger, flower production manager at Johnny's Selected Seeds in Albion, Maine. Johnny's, a mail-order seed company with customers among both backyard gardeners and commercial market growers, has seen tremendous growth in interest in edible flowers recently, Alger says.

Customers still love the old favorites, including tiny Gem marigolds, cornflowers, pansies and snapdragons, but more adventurous choices are gaining in popularity, Alger says. Instead of pinching off the flowers from the tips of mint and basil plants and tossing them on the compost heap, people are putting these blooms into salad mixes. Pea blossoms and wispy pea shoots are flavorful and elegant garnishes for cakes and other desserts. Cilantro flowers are coming to the table, too, adding spice to salads and Southwestern-style dishes.

Johnny's has developed an edible flower guide (available on the company's website) to help gardeners and market growers appreciate the spicy, nutty, intense flavors of some unexpected flowers and herbs and to experiment well beyond the basics. Blue borage blooms, yellow mustard and arugula flowers, and peppery stock flowers have distinctive flavors and can "add whimsy and beauty to an event," says Joy Longfellow, a flower production technician at Johnny's. "The range of colors and varieties in these crops gives so much room for creativity."

Growing edible flowers is easy, even for novices. Many grow best from seed sown directly in a sunny spot in the garden in spring or early summer. Bachelor's buttons (cornflowers), sunflowers and marigolds will bloom all summer long, which gives you plenty of time to experiment with their colors, textures and flavors in recipes. Make room for these blooms in beds around the margins of a vegetable garden, in colorful sweeps between rows of beans and tomatoes, or in garden beds of their own near the kitchen door, so you can step outside to pick a few flowers -- for bouquets or for baking -- whenever you like.

Many vegetable flowers are a bonus crop you may not have appreciated before. Instead of ripping out the last of the spring radishes when they start to turn pithy, let them come into bloom, and you'll discover that the flowers are a spicy and delicious accent for salads. Broccoli flowers, strawberry blooms and the wispy white sprays of flowers of bolted kale and collard plants are also edible -- and tasty. Squash blossoms, of course, are a classic salad garnish, and their bright yellow flowers can be stuffed with mild cheese and herbs for a popular appetizer. Bees appreciate these blooms in the garden, but the plants are prolific, so there will be plenty of flowers to harvest for the table, too.

The best time to pick edible flowers is moments before you use them, when their colors and flavors are at their best. If you need to harvest flowers several hours to a day before using them in recipes, make a bouquet for the kitchen counter and keep it out of direct sunlight. Lavender flowers, as well as the blooms of basil, chives, dill, mint and other herbs, hold up surprisingly well in a vase.

Recipes for basil-flower mojitos, lemonade with borage blooms, and gazpacho decorated with calendula-petal garnish are a good start to your floral recipe repertoire, but don't stop there. You'll find inspiration for all kinds of edible flower-power salads, soups and desserts online. "Edible flowers are a wonderful way to elevate the look of any table," Longfellow says, "whether that means some nasturtiums tossed into a salad or an intricately decorated wedding cake." Of course, you don't need any particular excuse to experiment. Edible flowers turn cupcakes for the kids or a lunchtime salad into a special occasion.

SOURCES

Seeds for edible flowers of all kinds are available from Johnny's Selected Seeds (johnnyseeds.com) and other mail-order specialists, and on the seed racks at your local garden shop. Johnny's also offers a guide to edible flowers and a few recipes on the company's website.

Many herbs known for their edible flowers (basil, dill, fennel, cilantro and others) are easy to grow from seed. Others (mint, chives, sage, oregano) can be grown from transplants. Harvesting the flowers often encourages the plants to branch and produce more leaves and flowers for the table.