I emailed them and they responded quickly but tersely as well. They said I could return the plant for a refund if I wanted to. I followed up with an email with the same picture attached as above and asked if their grower would confirm that it was a dwarf jamaican red banana and they replied with a curt, "yes". Anyway, the plant was just ten bucks and the shipping would be almost as much, so why should I bother returning the plant? I would end up spending the same total amount of money and have nothing to show for it. I have read on Daves Garden that many people have a similar experience from this company (Hirts Gardens) or are dissatisfied with the quality of the plants and/or the customer service. I would cut your loss and never deal with Hirts again.

Thanks for the welcome back Nancy. I hope this time I'll be able to hang out for awhile. :-) Now, ladies, I know what that awful vine is that smothers everything in its path - bitter melon vine. I have that one here, as well, trying to blanket everything in its path. Ugh, it's a bugger as well. Today I did not put in my one hour's worth of work out in the yard, like I've been disciplining myself to do. We had a death in the family over the holiday (my older brother), and I'm just trying to keep myself moving here. No motivation, argh. girlsaylor

Sorry about the double post, I realized I didn't answer Honu's question. Honu, Aloha! Honestly, I cannot say I have had the pleasure of trying a Hawaiian chile. Someday I certainly will if I can get my hands on the seeds. Regarding your question; I will split it into two parts. First, as far as heat, heat is a somewhat subjective thing. Now, it's true that no one on earth would day that a bell pepper is hotter than a chocolate hab, but different species of capsicum have different types and ratios of capsaicin. Therefore, if someone has only eaten habaneros (capsicum chinense) their whole life and then bites into a manzano chile (capsicum pubescens) they would certainly find it hotter than someone who has been eating manzanos their whole life. For instance, I can bear habaneros but choke like crazy on jalapenos, which have lower levels of capsaicin but a type of capsaicin I am not used to. Capsaicin is a vanilla-like compound (no kidding) that binds to the pain receptors in your mouth. I'm not quite sure what happens to build tolerance (perhaps an increased level of some certain enzyme?) but something makes eating a certain type of chile more bearable after a while. That being said, I have read HPLC (high performance liquid chromatography, which involves the extraction of capsaicin from the sample pepper and the direct measurement of the level) reports on some of these chiles, and nothing compares to the amount of capsaicin in the capsicum chinense species. They have a very high level of capsaicin compared to other peppers and HPLC is a much more accurate and less subjective method of measuring heat than the scoville units test (a dilution test). The hottest capsicum chinenses that I have tried? Trinidad scorpion, chocolate scotch bonnet, chocolate habanero. I have a friend who claims the USDA datil is the hottest thing he has ever tried (out of I would guess hundreds of different chinenses) and another friend who swears by something called a trinidad 7-pod (also known as a 7-pot, the name being a derivation of the fact that one pepper will season 7 pots of soup, go figure). With that, we will see what comes for me in the future but I can say this: the red savina is not the world's hottest pepper. Regarding taste: that's a tough one. I like the more fruity, citrusy chinenses over the smoky ones, and don't like the taste of annuums that much. For annuums, pequins and long slim cayennes are nicely flavored and pretty versatile. My favorites are obviously the chinenses though, and if I were to pick the best tasting they would be, in no order, limon, fatalii, datil, caribbean red hab, chocolate hab (quite smoky but still very nice), billy goat, true scotch bonnet, devil's tongue, red hab (wonderful!), yellow hab (like an incredibly hot datil), grenada scotch bonnet, scotch bonnet, red (from tomatogrowers). Of these if you are looking for something a bit milder and not so explosive stick with scotch bonnet, red, yellow scotch bonnet, and limon, I think they are bearable. If you are looking for something mild but still good tasting go with aji dulce #2. I hope I didn't overanswer your question. To trim it down to five chinenses would certainly involve limons, datils, caribbean reds, fataliis and chocolate habs, but that does not do justice to the wonderful flavor and versatility of some of the others I have tried, which are just as delicious but not as brutally hot. Good luck with chile growing and if you have any other questions let me know. Mark p.s. we did have a humid summer this year, very humid in fact, and the chiles did well. I don't know if humidity affects them as much as heat, and certainly fertilizer and water level affects them as well. Basically, the more stress the hotter the pepper, but I am in NJ so we are not usually incredibly hot or humid. Peace!

sraehelen Have DH get out of the kitchen unless he can be retrained! LOL I do all of the cleaning here as DW has not a clue. How scratched is your sink? I found a product which makes your sink like new. It's called Scratch Away. I found it at Home Depot. I don't know where you live but the link is www.micro-surface.com They even have a product to remove the surface scratches in fiber glass tubs when a cleaning person uses a green, 3'M, scrubbing pad on it and all of their products work well. I have tried them all as I own a cleaning service. There are 5 grit pads with an abrasive liquid and you start with the roughest grain and work down to the finest working with the grain of the sink. Caution, do not use this in any other Kitchen appliances. They will not be able to take it. The sink will look like new. 3 years ago I hired people for a party to do the heating of the food and the clean up. $400 later the only thing they did was to do the dishes and ruin my sink. They didn't know how to work a broiler, convection oven, or the 3 micros'. It was a waste but when I looked at the sink I was going to replace it. This product saved the day. Give it a try as it does work. As to the day to day cleaning there was a product which I had found at a county fair when I was 21 or 22. It was called Astonish and made in England. I will be 55 in June so that was a while ago. This stuff is great stuff! This cleans the sink like nothing I have ever used. I has an abraive but after you use the Scratch Away you just use this for the cleaning. Just have DH do it as he will show the sink to all visitors. Both products are great and would spread the word. Please ignore any typing mistakes I am having a problem with my motor skills. I do know my cleaning stuff though. Get rid of the Comet! LOL