For a chance to win my one-of-a-kind harvest apron, tell me about a vegetable or fruit you grow that is your all-around favorite in the comments below. I’ll toss your name into a hat and draw a lucky winner sometime mid-October.
Find out more about our harvest apron in the Oct/Nov issue of MaryJanesFarm. Stay tuned for more magazine-related giveaways. If you’re not yet a subscriber to my magazine, MaryJanesFarm, subscribe here for $19.95/year.
Buy props used in MaryJane’s books and magazine!
5% of profits will benefit www.firstbook.org, a non-profit that provides new books to children from low-income families throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Here’s how:
MaryJane will post a photo and a description of a prop and its cost along with a few details as to its condition here: https://shop.maryjanesfarm.org/MaryJanesCurations. It’s a playful way to be the new owner of a little bit of farm herstory.
pumpkins!
Gourds, Gourds, Gourds. I love to grow gourds. They are hardy, blossoms remind me of Hawaii (even though I have never been) and I love to create with gourds. They are so forgiving and fun. Wood burning, carving, painting, I just go nuts for gourds. and love your magazine, mom gets my sis and I a sub. every year for Christmas. My most treasured gift!
Home grown fresh peas.. Shelling peas with my Mom.. A favorite memory
It would have to be apples from our trees. So many recipes you can make from them during the winter months. Really LOVE them.
At present, I’m unable to grow anything. However, in years past, I adored helping in my parents’ gardens. I have to say that I haven’t tasted any vegetables as good since then. Everything my mom and dad grew was wonderful. I especially enjoyed shelling the butterbeans, as well as cooking and eating them. Of course, my children, husband and I really enjoyed the watermelons that my dad grew.
I love your harvest apron. Since I do not sew myself, I would adore to be the recipient of this lovely apron.
My favorite vegetable that I grow are my heirloom tomatoes. Each one is a different shape and color with it’s own charm! They are so tasty and healthy that we eat them raw right off the vine. There is nothing yummier than a sun warmed ripe tomato.
I love our blackberries we grow in our backyard. I’m our part of the country (So. CA) they are ripe in June. I enjoy picking them and making fresh blackberry jam. Our daughter in law makes labels for me and my husband gave me the name of Simi Anna Farms after our town Simi Valley. In my circle of friends I’m known as the “jam lady as I make many kinds. We also have three navel orange trees and a Meyer lemon we share. I freeze juice often so we have it to enjoy when the trees are not producing. I love your magazine and all the interesting websites you give us for new ideas. Thank you.
Hi Mary Jane…how wonderful and fun the harvest apron is!! It would be so wonderful to wear the apron when I’m collecting all of my favorite vegetables ever to grow….Lemon Boy tomatoes! I grow all sorts of vegetables and fruit here on our farm and there is just nothing better than a yummy golden yellow tomato that is juicy and oh so sweet!!, and of course growing a whole bunch of them to share with neighbors and friends and with our local food bank too. Sharing the bounty of nature in it’s most amazing and delectable of forms in vegetables and fruits is one of my most fulfilling and sacred things to do. Here is to all of us in being and growing with Nature at it’s best!!
MaryJane,
You are the bomb! Such a wonderful apron! I love the big pockets! I still wear an apron! Love them!
Jalapeños and tomatoes for salsa.
I love to grow garlic! I use my garden garlic all year round (or at least until it’s gone)! Home grown organic garlic is wonderful! I put garlic in many of my recipes.
Blueberries!! I love to throw them in oatmeal!!! They are sooo good for you!!
Zucchini for sure! From the blooms to the challenge of picking a zucchini at just the right size (overnight seems they can double to triple their size) and there use in dishes seems unlimited. This year I made a cookbook just for my zucchini recipes!
Broccoli because it tastes so good and is good for you. At least in Michigan it is easy to grow and will keep producing past the first frost!
My favorite vegetable is really a fruit, the tomato. I can tons of them every year. I use them in spaghetti sauce, soups, gumbo, salsa, mixed with corn or okra. The ways to use tomatoes are endless.
Love heirloom tomatoes
My favorite veggies to grow are yellow squash, and zucchini. They grow the easiest and are abundant in numbers. This year I planted pumpkin seeds. Next thing I saw was
green perfectly round pumpkins from the vines the pumpkins seeds are growing. I told my daughter in law about it. She said after she found out I was growing the pumpkins next to zucchini, they were cross pollinated, there fore giving the zucchini look. We had a BIG laugh over this. So we are trying to rename them. “Pumpzuccs”
My favorite vegetable that I grew was rainbow peppers and radishes……Watching them grow was iinteresting to capiture the beauty of each color…I couldn’t waIt till havest time.. Then all were ready to pick, I went to the garden and all were eaten by our hungrey friends of the outdoors,….I guess they enjoyed them, cause all were gone… Until another year…
Since I raise about 300 tomato plants to sell, I guess I have to say that tomatoes are my favorite vegetable. Also, there is nothing like the first ear of sweet corn! The apron is lovely and practical.
I love to grow white icicle, red, and watermelon radishes. Not hard to start and easy to tell when to pluck out of the ground when the globe tops out under the green leaf tops. Just wash, put on some sea salt, and give your tastebuds a jump start of hot flavors.
Leeza Perry
New Subscriber 2016
I just love basil does well in the heat and love pesto. Hubbard squash would be next it’s the one that keeps giving all winter, and bugs don’t seem to get this one.
I would have to say our spaghetti squash. So good and so easy to freeze for those cold winter nights.
I like to grow tomatoes, beets. and corn. I usually make pickled beets from the
beets in my garden.
Hi Mary Jane,
I have a strawberry patch on the corner of our house. My husbands grandmother passed away 15 years ago and we brought back some of her strawberry plants that were in her yard. It gets bigger every year, I canned 6 jars of strawberry preserves and froze and ate what we didn’t can. My husbands grandmother was such a wonderful special person, I know she is looking down from heaven smiling knowing her strawberries are growing in our back yard. 🙂
And thank you for helping so many want to get back in the dirt and appreciate animals and natural. We plant a garden every year and I have been working on convincing my husband on us getting a few chickens.
Love,
Linda Hulbert
My favorite to grow is pumpkins! Since I’m a novice – I didn’t realize that they would cross polinate with squash and not produce. Lesson learned!
How to choose, there are just so many! A cucumber here, a tomato there, a few apples on the way in. I might even forget what all I have stuck in the pockets until I get back in and remember all my yummy treasures.
My husband plants a garden every year. I especially like to pick the cherries and put them up.
Oh my! I love this apron! My favorite thing to grow is my tomatoes. There is nothing like homegrown tomatoes! I wait all year for them to grow and ripen!
I love your magazine! My son always says it’s my magazine. I love the apron. Reminds me of my Granny.
Ambrosia corn is my favorite veggie grown in my garden.it is fun to plant, watch grow, pick, eat and play in. My twin grandsons and I run through the green stalks then play hide and seek in it after harvest. It is a refuge for our chickens when hawks are around. They enjoy the shade of the corn on hot summer days and enjoy eating it as much as we do. Corn season is pure fun and thanks to my freezer, corn takes the monotony out of a long cold winter.
We grow many. Things on our farm, I enjoy my zuikinni , Raw in salads, fried, and best of all my aunts recipe for bread and muffins. They don’t last very long with grandkids around.
I grow Basil and cook with it all year. Some is out in my summer garden and in the winter I grow it in a pot in the kitchen.
Oh my goodness….hard choice. I would have to say cream peas. Nothing screams down home country cooking like peas and cornbread! I love your apron! To tell the truth, I haven’t read a thing in the magazine or blog that I don’t love!
It’s not so much what I grow but what nature grows! The bittersweet makes the most amazing wreaths for the barn this time of year!
I love the style of the Harvest Apron- Please enter me in the drawing. It has nice size pockets for my garden harvest Thank you 🙂
My favorite fruit that I grow are raspberries. They are one of my favorite colors and good to eat fresh or make jam, including chocolate raspberry jam. They are good for healthy eyes as well and mine are not great. My honeybees love the blossoms!
My in-laws have the garden…I just help. It’s a toss up between the blueberries and tomatoes. Both are versatile and useful year round in multiple ways.
Squash, kale, Swiss chard, and fresh herbs: cilantro, oregano, chives…. Oh my!
My favorite thing to grow is zucchini! It pretty much takes care of itself in our garden, and I like how we can eat both the flowers and the vegetable later. Second place runner up in our garden is leek – one planting over 8 years ago and it still keeps coming back, growing strong every year and providing us with a great garnish and ingredient for vichyssoise soup!
The apron is lovely, great pockets and fabric…I wear and apron myself every time I garden or cook!
Bush Beans ! The kids LOVE planting and growing these and they grow so quickly – they love to pick them for supper 🙂 !
I always grow tomatoes. I use tomatoes in all kinds of recipes. I love to just slice them add some salt and pepper and eat them. Tomato sandwiches are delicious. I also can them and can my homemade spaghetti sauce. Yum….. tomatoes.
I love to grow heirloom tomatoes and beans. It feels good to use the older vegetables and very tasty. This year I have tried potatoes for the first time. I cannot wait
The grapes I grow are my favorite. I grow Valiant (a type of concord) for jelly and Frontenaque for wine.
blueberries!
What an adorable apron! My favorite crop to grow is crimson sweet watermelons. The best watermelon I have ever tasted!
The fruit that I love to grow is cherry tomatoes, it is a sweet treat I can enjoy all year long. I love your apron, it is so beautiful:)
Definitely spaghetti squash! My husband built me a spaghetti squash arch for the garden to keep the squash off the ground and every summer I’m thrilled to see the plant crawling up and over the arch, covering it with beautiful and plentiful veggies to enjoy throughout the summer months.
I miss my veggie garden here in the northeast when the seasons change, but I love each and every season.
My very favorite to grow and eat is beets. I just love them, they are so yummy to eat. Love this apron to. Good Luck to everyone. Farm girl sister #6969
They are my favorite also!!!!!
Has to be carrots. I love them fresh from my garden with the dirt wiped off with my shirt then munching down on them. So fresh, juicy, and crunchy. Reminds me of working with my grandma in her gardens when I was a little girl on a hot summer day.
We love to grow strawberries, kale, salad greens, beans and zucchini in our garden, but my favorite thing to grow is fresh tomatoes. I live about a 1/4 mile from the beach in far northern California so growing tomatoes is almost impossible with out a greenhouse. We buy a special Norwegian variety that do well on the coast from a smalll nursery ,the Dutch Gardner, opened by a wonderful woman, Teri McCune-Oostra. There is nothing better than fresh tomatoes