Ideal2545, did you ever expect all this when you asked about a growing mix for your tomatoes and peppers? I had hoped to get back to this sooner, but life has been very busy the last number of weeks and I had a limited amount of time I could devote to scholarship on this. Tapla, I have no idea where or by whom the quotes you apparently want to present as authoritative relative to Ca:Mg ratios and "antagonistic deficiency" were generated. I said in my post above, "I can find no science demonstrating a Ca:Mg ratio that must be maintained to prevent an "antagonistic deficiency." Once again, I'd love to see a reference." Since you refused to provide a reference, I did my own search. The concept of an optimal Ca:Mg ratio is contained in the theory called the basic cation saturation ratio (BCSR). BCSR also includes potassium in the theory that holds that certain ratios of calcium, magnesium & potassium cations must be maintained for optimal plant growth. Loew and May, mentioned in your quote, published this notion in 1901. I am providing everyone a link to a review that discusses the development and then the discarding of the BCSR concept. It has been proven SCIENTIFICALLY to be incorrect about 30 years ago. The authors conclude their review stating, "The data do not support the claims of the BCSR, and continued promotion of the BCSR will result in the inefficient use of resources in agriculture and horticulture." https://www.agronomy.org/publications/sssaj/articles/71/2/259 The authors do point out in the review that many soil testing labs push BCSR because it sells more fertilizer. Their implication is that the 2 industries are linked in many cases. I do not know if that is true or not, but one would not be surprised if it is true. Another publication entitled "Calcium-Magnesium Ratios: Setting the Record Straight" from the University of Minnesota ends with the statement, "It's an outdated, antique concept that has no value in high yield, modern agriculture." http://www.extension.umn.edu/cropenews/2003/03mncn07.htm I can not find the origin of the following quote, but it appears on a lot of sites around the web. According to Dr. Stanley Barber, Purdue University, "There is no research justification for the added expense of obtaining a definite Ca:Mg ratio in the soil. Research indicates that plant yield or quality is not appreciably affected over a wide range of Ca:Mg ratios in the soil." Dr. Barber, who died in 2002, was a member of the US National Academy of Sciences for 15 years and is possibly the premier figure in the development of soil science. http://www.spectrumanalytic.com/support/library/ff/Ca_Basics.htm It now makes sense why I could find no mention of any of this in Marschner's Mineral Nutrition of Higher Plants. It is because these concepts were scientifically discarded about 30 years ago. Relative to BER, I almost do not know where to start. In my post, I provided a link to a 2005 review that is authored by one of the leaders in scientific research on BER. Dr. Ho has a VERY long list of publications about BER. Tapla responded with a quote from Dr. Carolyn Male of unknown source and date. When I check Dr. Male's publication history on pubmed and google scholar, I can only find 3 publications, none of which have anything to do with BER. I do see that she authored a book in 1999 entitled "Smith & Hawken: 100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden." From what I can read of it on Google, it looks like a good book, but it is out of print. I am also aware that she was for a number of years a major figure in Seed Savers Exchange much to her credit. All of which is fine, but I am betting if one asks Dr. Male where her understanding of the molecular mechanisms driving BER is derived, she will say through reading the scientific literature. I also bet if you ask her who knows more about BER, herself or Dr. Ho, she will say Dr. Ho. I do not say this to belittle Dr. Male in any way. I presume she is a very smart, capable person. But the quote you provide from her appears antiquated. I do not find it particularly enlightening. If Dr. Male is the scientist you believe her to be, I feel pretty certain she will acknowledge that she can not preclude the possibility that there could be sets of growing conditions where egg shells contribute in preventing BER during tomato growth. Once again, everyone can choose which source(s) of information to depend upon to further their understanding and inform their growing decisions. Tapla is clearly very generous with his time and appears to genuinely want to be helpful. He is apparently a very skilled bonsai practitioner. When I first started reading Tapla's posts, I thought he must really know his stuff. However, as I read more of his posts, I kept reading statements that were scientifically nonsensical. As I read more & more of the plant biology and horticultural literature, I came to the realization that Tapla simply does not understand what he is talking about much of the time and offers explanations that are frequently WAY off the mark like the notion of antagonisms between Ca:Mg and his use of calcium magnesium ratios. He uses big, scientific sounding words, but what he writes is often simply gibberish. It is my impression that the solutions Tapla suggests, while typically workable at some level, often direct people away from other workable solutions that are potentially much more attractive to many, or even most, of the folks out there trying to solve a growing problem or simply grow bigger or faster or cheaper, etc. In no way am I saying that the solutions Tapla promotes are unworkable. They typically do appear to be workable. However, after a lot of research, I have chosen other approaches that work for me that Tapla contends should not. In trying to understand Tapla's approaches, I have NEVER seen Tapla point anyone to a scientific publication that supports his opinions. I have seen him post authoritative sounding quotes as he does above but I have never seen a reference that allows you to go read the larger work. I have seen plenty of people, me included, ask to be directed to those references or the experiments/experience that support his statements only to be ignored by Tapla, which in my professional world as a scientist is a sin second only to lying about data. Not good. Certainly in science, and I believe in most aspects of life, there is true value in sharing sources of information when trying to solve a problem or transmit knowledge. I try to do this in all my posts and I happily note others do too. Sharing information sources provides everyone with the opportunity to review positions based on shared information. ALL of us get things wrong from time to time. Providing people with the body of information you used to get from A to B empowers anyone who wishes to review the thinking and point out any apparent mistakes or short-comings. Tapla's routine refusal to direct anyone to source material has a very direct underlying message. A person who does this sort of thing is saying by his/her action that he/she believes you are too stupid to read source material or examine how a particular experiment was performed and come to your own judgment. He/she is saying by his/her action that he/she is privy to knowledge that only he/she can understand and interpret. As insults go, it is very demeaning. I hope everyone recognizes that this insult is directed at each and every person that reads this forum. At another level, it is a power game that puts the individual with a "superior knowledge" which is unattainable to the rest of the poor souls out there in a position to always have the last word. As I said above, it is a behavior that there is NO tolerance for in science. Fortyonenorth, you ask what my issue is with Tapla. It is his behaviors that I describe above. He constantly portrays himself as scientific and then behaves in a manner that NO ONE in science has any tolerance for and is DEEPLY offensive and insulting to anyone who cares about science. In the initial part of Tapla's response to a post of mine on the Figs 4 Fun forum, he for whatever reason found it necessary to recite some of his credentials rather than agree with or disagree with or even discuss the substantive points I had raised in that post. Credentials do not make statements correct or incorrect. If an explanation to a question is correct, I do not believe it matters whether it came from someone who never graduated from high school or someone who earned a PhD from Harvard. My understanding is that a primary purpose of this and similar forums to share experiences and information to help each other have better growing experiences. Part of that process should be discussion from shared information sources and rational disagreement if needed. When the issues have a scientific component or are informed by my practical experiences, I will try to add to the discourse. Sorry to go on so. Good luck with your gardens!

Define hottest. No really, how you define it will go a long way towards what your answer is. Do you want the pepper that at it's extreme can produce the highest scoville score? Do you want a pepper that has the highest average scoville rating? Do you want a pepper that has the highest consistent heat? These are all very different things (highest maximum, highest minimum, highest average) that will give you a different answer in every case. If you want highest average, that right now would be the Butch T. If you want the highest minimum (and thus the most consistently hot pepper), that would be the 7-Pot Douglah. If you want the hottest maximum, thats where you start getting really murky. My advice would be to ignore the highest maximum "hottest" peppers because they often are not stable lines and have an insane amount of variation. What you typically see for those is that they grew out hundreds of plants, tested possibly thousands of pods, and found the *ONE* pod that was a fluke high rating and claimed the whole line as being the hottest thing ever. Doesn't matter if half of them turned out to be glorified bell peppers, long as one of them was uber-high the less-than-scrupulous seed sellers (you know who I'm thinking of here) will start massive add campaigns about it being the hottest pepper ever while offering up absolutely no real evidence to support that claim other than the one fluke pepper they tested. So yeah, my advice would be to go for the Douglah or the Butch T if you want world's hottest heat. Butch T's average out as hotter, but the Douglahs have a very narrow range of ratings meaning that you will effectively never get a dud from it, while the Butch T's can have a range of 500k+ scovilles. I would never buy seeds from anyone that claims to have the new hottest pepper unless they have provided substantial evidence to support that claim. By substantial I mean multiple test results showing the average heat of multiple generations of the line. At which point Guiness will have picked up on it and will have listed it as the official world's hottest. Anyone trying to sell you otherwise is most likely blowing smoke up your rear trying to make a fast buck.

Scratchmaster...nc-crn & plantslayer are correct. The USDA requires a permit called Small Lots of Seed to be sent with the seeds. There is also other documentation that is required to accompany the seeds. This means you would have to send all of this to the company you are purchasing your seeds from first. Then they have to fill out all of the information correctly and send it back with the seeds and address labels. The seeds then hit a USDA inspection station at a port of entry, inspected, and if passed, the seeds are SUPPOSED to be sent on their way to you at no extra charge. As you can well imagine, this is more than a little inconvenient. You can apply online for the permit and it is simple to do so, if somewhat confusing. It usually doesn't take them too long to approve. But it is just NOT worth the effort! Unless you are ordering hundreds of dollars of rare seeds, don't bother with this. Chances are that your seeds will make it just fine. Yes, there is that slim chance your seeds will cross the official who's boxers are in a twist and decides to confiscate your seeds. Then you try again. I played by the rules once, and only once, trying to get some rare, tropical fruit seeds sent from Singapore. The inspection station had no clue what the actual rules/procedures were and screwed it all up. I just take my chances from now on. Besides, I doubt they would be too concerned with chili pepper seeds coming from a legitimate company.

My opinion is that anything over 1 million scoville's is HOT Enough! Sure you can taste some flavor for about 10 seconds of the various flavors of different pods. But once the pain sets in, its all the same. I grew some chocolate bhuts from seed this year that a friend gave me. Some of the plants turned out to be chocolate bhuts and others turned out to be red/orange bhuts. Both of them were DAMN! HOT! I saved seeds from both the chocolate and the red/orange ones and will see what they produce next year. I didnt do anything to isolate any blooms so its anyone's guess what next season will bring ;) I froze some of em, and i dried and ground some into powder. I like spicy hot foods, so i use them quite often to zing things up. We all know that their are tons of different superhot peppers out there. As far as which pepper is the hottest debate, i agree with smokemaster that its a tool for seed sellers to try to make a quick buck.