July 7, 2026
On June 21, I did the new normal. Walking around the garden, collecting Japanese beetles, eating strawberries, picking tomatoes, looking for hornworm damage, looking for hornworms, picking beans, and squash. Bruce and I also go look at the orchard and pick blueberries.
In walking in the orchard area, I noticed this dragonfly. She was still enough I was able to get a good picture of her.
As we walked to the mailbox, I kept an eye out for geodes in the driveway gravel. I found when one as we walked to the mailbox.
I wasn’t able to capture the sparkles when I took the picture.
You know you live in a rural area where tractors go by on the road.
The sunset was pretty.
Back on June 5, we dug up our first crop of potatoes. To cure them and provide storage, I placed them in a long box with a lid. I didn’t want the sun getting to them.
On June 22, in my new normal, I found something was boring into some of my tomatoes. Ugh, fruit borers, and of course, they got into my big tomatoes.
On June 23, I did my new normal, and while I was at it, I took some more pictures of the garden before we dug up more potatoes.
We started digging potatoes and putting them into a five gallon bucket. Bruce put a little over four square feet of dirt into the garden cart, making a trench to move dirt into. This provided a place to move dirt as we dug up the potatoes. (An aside note, we planted the potatoes so deep it was hard to get to the potatoes. The potato plants made potatoes at the depth we planted them. They didn’t make potatoes above 7 inches down. All the hilling didn’t produce extra potatoes.)
Bruce weighted the bucket and subtracted the bucket weight from the total weight.
The sunset was pretty.
On June 24, we dug more potatoes. Bruce was doing the heavy lifting while I looked for the potatoes.
Unfortunately, I didn’t notice the fire ants right away and discovered them as they started stinging me. I cursed the evil beasts.
The second bucket had 22.2 pounds of potatoes.
More garden pictures and a sunset picture.
Blackberry Homestead 
Julia, I am so impressed with your garden produce! The tomato plant pictures were pretty, and all the different varieties were so interesting. I really liked the little baby melon and the white eggplant, too. It is like a million little still lifes!
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Thank you. I had fun taking them.
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With all that food at hand, you’ll be ready for the zombie apocalypse! 😝
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🧟
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If I start eating now I’ll be done by the time I finish your last blog post of 100 Geordie stories. 😈
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Better pace yourself. I still have more posts to re-format. 😈
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Wow, the potatoes and the different varieties of tomatoes including the beefsteak look fantastic! Your lawn is also so well cut. Bruce did a great job! You both do well with the garden!
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Bruce loves to speed mow. I leave it to him since he enjoys it so much.
I had fun growing different varieties. I made rough mashed potatoes with one purple potato. It left beautiful streaks of purple in the white potatoes.
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In case you get stumped by your potato bounty: https://www.instagram.com/popular/1000-ways-to-cook-potatoes/
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🥔🔪😋
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I love the tender sweetness of new potatoes. I just got home from the farmers’ market, and saw new potatoes for the first time this season. I bought some and look forward to having them tonight.
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Enjoy your potatoes. I also love fresh new potatoes. I am considering making creamed potatoes. My grandmother made it with new red potatoes.
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Whoa…that’s a whole lotta hash browns! Your garden is quite amazing.
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I found a great hash brown recipe somewhere, but now, I have no clue where it is! 😩
We’ll be gone for two weeks in July…I am dreading what I’ll come back to.
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