It was our first time. We were virgin bean shellers. And I’m afraid it showed. Our technique needs some work. Shelling these two pints of Dragon Tongue bush beans took us over an hour.

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Beans are amazing. They produce frantically and for an extended period of time. They can be harvest fresh, they are good frozen or canned, and they can be dried. That’s crazy versatility. I can completely comprehend the Dave Ramsey’s beans and rice economy diet in terms of production quantities. At least I can speak to the beans half of the equation.  It would be interesting to plant a rice patty some day.

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I’ve read of gardeners slamming the entire bean plant with dried pods against the sides of a metal garbage can. The seeds presumably fall to the bottom, and I’m sure much of the chaff would too.  I didn’t look very hard, but I couldn’t find any metal garbage cans lying around.  And most of our beans are pole varieties, so pulling out the entire vine is not a great option.  Shelling by hand, one bean at a time, was fine – just time intensive. It would have been nice to have an air compressor to spray the chaff off the seeds. That could work. Or maybe just a strong fan. The amount of beans we grow can certainly be done by hand in a few hours so I don’t plan on running out to buy an air compressor tomorrow. Then again, we did lose our tire pump the other day. What would Dave Ramsey say to that?

A peck (1/4 bushel = 2 gallons) might be a conservative estimate, it’s been a great year for peppers.

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Above is a paprika pepper. It’s been a decent producer and much larger peppers than I expected – bigger than a golf ball and smaller than a billiard ball. I had anticipated more spice to them, but there isn’t really any kick to these. They aren’t exactly sweet though either. I’m not sure how to describe the flavor. Smokey?

We grew a large variety of peppers this year. Let’s review.

Canary Bell – A green to yellow/orange bell. Nice size and flavor. Best when allowed to ripen rather than eating green. Most susceptible to blight this year.

Healthy Red – A sweet yellow to red medium sized tapered pepper. Very solid. Very aromatic. Very good. Heavy producer. Needed staking.

YumYum Gold – A sweet green to red (even though the name and pictures suggest more orangish hues). Smaller tapered shape. Perfect for morning eggs, salsa, pizza, etc. Probably my favorite of the sweets this year.

Paprika – See above. Also somewhat susceptible to blight. I thought I might try to dry some, but eating them proved easier and delicious.

Cayenne -A spicy green to brilliant red. A small, quintessential chili, crinkly shaped pepper. Has some serious kick and nice lasting burn.

Bulgarian Carrot – A spicy green to orange, jalapeno shaped pepper. These were grown from last years seeds and did not seem to produce as much. And one plant turned out to be mutant. Fun. Looks to be a cross between the B Carrot and Tabasco (also grown last year).

Tabasco – A very small and very spicy pale yellow to orange/red. We grew these last year too, but none had time to ripen red. I have collected over a pint now. It seems to me the spice of tabasco doesn’t linger for long. The fruiting habit of the tabasco is interesting as the peppers are small enough to point up to the sky (image below).

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We were doing a little garden cleaning and this kiwano horn melon was sacrificed for better garden path clearance. The lemon cucumbers are perfectly ripe and so abundant it’s almost comical.

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The vines of the Kiwano’s have grown considerably well. They really want to ramble and climb. Much like the banana melons in this regard. I really should have given them more to climb on, but they managed to make their own trellis of the sunflower stalks and asparagus. The horns of the horn melon are indeed rather pointed. But even more of a nuisance are the fine spines along the vines and leaves. It is almost a necessity to wear gloves when checking on these plants. Otherwise I can expect to spend some time extracting the fine hair-like needles from my fingers. I have sensitive hands.

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At this yet to ripen stage, they taste like cucumbers. Nothing very exciting. When ripe I understand their flavor resembles bananas. If any ripen I will post again.

Our spiders were extra busy. An unusual number of webs were scattered around the gardens, and one rather large example was waiting to be photographed just outside the front door.

The morning dew helped the webs stand out a bit from their surroundings. But I still had trouble focusing accurately. Still, even slightly out of focus, this web is impressive.

Late August is a bit of a let-down for many gardeners, myself included. Here in Eastern Iowa zone 5, blooms are few and unless you have Cosmos planted in abundance and plants with Fall interest, this may well be the end of the season. I’d like to share with you some of my favorite late summer bloomers. We’ll start with this lovely pink Japanese Anemone acquired from  a generous member of my plant swap group.

Next is Angelica gigas (Korean Angelica), in her full glory.

And now on to Limelight hydrangea, the best and only hydrangea worth growing in my opinion. It has been reliably packed with huge upright balls year after year. I ripped out 3 Nikko blues this year- not one single bloom after 3 years.

Pictured here  blue vervain (Verbena hastata) grown from seed this year and already blooming away. It is almost indistinguishable from hoary vervain (Verbena stricta), which I also grow. In the background is the lovely Hopi-Dye Amaranth, an annual that sows itself everywhere.

Cleome is another annual that seeds itself with abandon. But it is very welcome here this time of year.

Wild fruit abounds out here in the country. Have never seen wild plum trees quite this loaded with fruit. If you can get at the fruit at just the right time, it is pretty palatable, but some pieces leave a chalky aftertaste, much like that of a wild grape. I did not sample many this year since our own Toka plum, one of the first trees planted when we arrived in 2007, bore a nice crop of “out-of-this-world” (according to me and several visitors) plums. On a side note, Toka is the only survivor of 10 odd fruit trees planted that first year. The others were peaches, nectarines and sweet cherries, which we have discovered with much exasperation do not like it here. Apples and plums are a much safer bet.

Pictured here is a cluster of unripe and one ripening Toka.

If I didn’t have so many other fruits and veggies to process I would be out in the ditch picking these elderberries.

Close readers will remember we planted a few new melon varieties this year. I don’t expect we have any really close readers, so to recap, we planted MN Midget Melon, Pepino Melon, Kiwano Horn Melon and Banana Melon. All but the Pepino have more than taken their fair share of garden space. The Pepino have suffered in the shade of several tomato plants. Sorry Pepino.

We’ve had MN Midgets before, so while they are not new, they are a favorite. Perfect size and flavor. A small cantaloupe with super sweet flavor.

But now we have something new. Or new to us anyway. The Banana Melon.

Turns out this variety was popular back in the late 1800′s. It was in the seed catalogs of the day, so I’m guessing it enjoyed some level of popularity. Either that or some clever marketer realized we gardeners enjoy planting different varieties and was trying to sell us on an oddity. I know that’s why I bought them.

They are large. Much larger than I would ever have expected. This one was about 13”, but I gather they can grow close to 2 feet. I picked it slightly immature I think, but there was a little soft spot, so rather than let it rot, I thought we should try it.

It’s pretty good. The taste and texture is much like a cantaloupe. It was not quite as sweet as our MN Midgets, but maybe that was due to immaturity. The vines love to climb, and it appears to be a heavy producer – if only we had a longer Summer. And not to be a complainer, but many sites and catalogs claim this melon’s name is derived from it’s shape — sure, it’s oblong like a banana, but it doesn’t have that quintessential banana curve to it. I vote for renaming this the Yellow Mellow Melon.

We had a nice showing of sunflowers this year. Most of them were volunteers, and most blooms are done now. I do enjoy a good volunteer. The birds seem to like the dried blooms. We will most definitely be feeding the birds more sunflower seeds this winter. Sorry to mention that season already.

(Here is the sunflower set on Flickr if the above slideshow doesn’t play for you.)

For several years now I have wanted to make a trellis out of old bed springs, which are easy to procure out here in the country. Had my eye on some in a burn pile adjacent to our property, but then I found these springs, which look to be from an old truck seat, at the landfill. Narrow and easy for a lone junk picker like myself to load, they were perfect!

Joe Pye is looking extra handsome this year with all the rain.

I’m very pleased with this totally unplanned ensemble of Joe, Verbena bonariensis and Hopi-Dye Amaranth- the latter 2 seeded themselves. Notice the Russian sage foliage in the foreground. I love this plant but but am at odds with them since in my garden they never seem to have the space they need to hold their  their branches erect. This one looks better than my others, which look knotted up, cramped and just plain unattractive. I have resorted to either shearing these down multiple times or ripping them out entirely.  They don’t respond well to my tendency to plant things too close together. While we’re on that topic, last year I planted a shrub a little too close to Joe Pye. It didn’t take long for me to realize that this would soon become problematic. My gardening friend Shelby suggested I move the shrub and not even think about trying to dig up Joe. This spring it was apparent that Joe wanted to swallow that shrub alive. I couldn’t believe how he had increased. There were 2 huge distinctly separate clumps of him cornering the poor shrub. I didn’t remember planting 2 Joe Pyes- but then again I don’t remember planting a lot of things. Could a single Joe Pye plant do that? I still haven’t taken any real action (not surprising to those who know me). But for kicks I did slice off a few small pieces of Joe with a sharp spade, which felt like trying to dig into compacted gravel. I replanted these pieces in my new bed, which needs spreaders like Joe to cover the ground. They are now blooming away happily, just not as tall as big Joe since they were transplanted. I would never want to attempt to dig up big Joe entirely.