Fast shipping, cool storage and variety selection help. Sometimes nearby growers do, too.

Nonetheless, flavor compounds, vitamins, and the essential oils that create aroma start to erode. Color and food texture deteriorate in line.

"Produce varies in how long it maintains quality. That’s why you almost never find fresh okra or shelled peas in the store. But Irish potatoes and onions are available year-round," said Chuck Marr, a horticulturist at Kansas State University.

Concern about health-promoting foods, plus today’s growing interest in hard-to-find vegetables are major reasons why home gardening is on the upswing, he said. If nothing else, people are tiring of what’s easily available, as they increase the number of vegetables and fruits they eat daily. Or, they’re remembering what grandparents used to say about the flavor of fresh-harvested food from the garden.

"Another thing helping today’s trend is development of more compact, yet highly productive varieties. Now you can harvest a good amount of food by gardening in pots on your deck or patio. Or, you can scatter crop plants in with your flowers and ornamentals. You don’t need a full-scale garden plot unless you want to grow melons or to preserve some produce for winter," said Marr, who is K-State Research and Extension’s garden crop specialist.

For best overall health benefits, cool-season vegetables may be Kansans’ best bet, he said.

"Nutriceuticals -- those naturally occurring compounds that have health benefits above and beyond the vitamins we’ve known about for a long time -- are an active research area now. The jury is still out on how they all plug into human nutrition and health. But, we know some cancer preventatives are in the cabbage family," the horticulturist said. "We also know that every study in the last 10 years has been pounding in the fact that Americans need to eat less fat and more fiber, fruits and vegetables.

"Fruits can be a little heavy on natural sugars and take some know-how to grow successfully. Cool-season vegetables, on the other hand, are vitamin- and fiber-rich; many are easy to grow and will produce two harvests a year -- one in spring and one in fall."

For those planning just to plant in spring, cool-season vegetables also offer another garden-plot alternative.

"You can create pocket gardens in your flowerbeds -- little spaces around the edges that you’ll fill with annual flowers later on," he explained. "Vegetables grow best with at least a half-day of sunlight or more. Sometimes that can include spots that are shady in summer, because the trees or shrubs that create the shade don’t fully leaf out until May."

Soil preparation for flowers is also good for vegetables, Marr said.

"Almost any soil will do, so long as you’ve turned it to a depth of about 8 to 12 inches and have broken up the clods to about gravel size," he said. "Typically, though, flowerbeds have soil that’s been improved with organic matter every year. That’s ideal for growing vegetables, too."

Marr recommends checking through both catalogs and stores when buying seed. New varieties are greatly increasing gardeners’ choices in colors and flavors, even with old-faithful crops such as leaf, romaine and bib (buttercrunch) lettuce.