That Sambucus is very nice. Purple/bronze foliage is a major theme in my tropical/mixed bed. The three standout backbone plants are barberry cultivars (including "Helmond Pillar" and a tall variety with horizontal interwoven stems), Cotinus "Royal Purple" and best of all, Physocarpus "Diablo". "Diablo" is putting on its one-week flowering show right now, but its major role is as a superb foliage backdrop for other flowering plants. It is basically bulletproof, needing only occasional pruning to control size (it wants to be massive). Purple/bronze foliage annuals this year include Cannas "Australia" and "Firebird", Celosia "New Look", Begonia "Big" (bronze-leaf form), Alternanthera "Little Ruby" and Canna "Tropical Red" (bronze-leaf variety). And yes, red/scarlet flowers are important too.

To all who commented and are worried, the house was new to us in September and the previous owner planted many flowering plants, and a gazzillion creeping plants, so the front look okayish, except due to me woeful lack of knowledge on the subject of anything pretty, except runner beans! :) it is beginning to look a mess, as I don't know a weed from a deliberately planted flower :( I have some clues now as I discovered one part has plastic mulch on it and the weeds have grown on top of that! so I have now identified some of them, and I am busy tighing ribbon to the shrubs I like so I can identify them in the fall, when I plan to rearrange things a little! I do have nurstuium?? in the veg beds more by luck than judgement as my twin four year olds insisted on flowers for you mummy! and it has paid off they are covered in some small black fly thing and the toms next to it clear! oh and I think I may have planted a sunflower right in the middle of a patch of toms covered by netting! DOH! slap hand on head! thanks for you sugestions

John, Has the SSE pepper section gotten any bigger this year? I believe you said there were 20+ pages dedicated to peppers. I assume you are referring to the main yearbook for members. Not that I need more peppers this season to grow! :) The big project this year will be seeing how I do starting, maintaining, and hardening off the peppers prior to planting. I'm taking on quite a bit more than I did last year. I look at it as fun though since I enjoy gardening..others might call it a "chore." Chris

Here's my take on it (I grew both the caribbean reds and the chocolate habs the last two years in a row.) The caribbean red hab produces very hot fruit, and the fruit are not very variable in heat, it doesn't matter if they are early season, late season, etc, they are all consistently pretty darn hot. The congo black (chocolate hab), however, can be more variable. This is true of most chinenses. Last year after hearing all the rave about how hot fatalii were, I tried one and found it to be pretty mild compared to other extremely hot chinenses like devil's tongues and chocolate habs. I adopted the notion that the fatalii weren't so hot. Imagine my surprise when I made a batch of pickled fatalii and draped them over a slice of pizza and they were hotter than almost anything that I had tried! The variability comes from the plant (and fruit) being exposed to stress. The fruit tend to be hottest when the plant gets stressed by a) high temps, b) lack of water and c) lack of nutrients. They also tend to taste best when they are stressed. Some people even purposely slice the roots when the last harvest of fruit is maturing. They believe that cutting the roots when the fruit begin to mature will make the best tasting and hottest fruit by cutting off the supply of water and nutrients to the plant. Annuums are the most susceptible to stress I believe, moreso than chinenses. I've experienced it with both. I had puriras (annuums) last year that gave me pretty mild peppers early in the season. We had a very hot and dry spell in august and I hadn't fertilized. When I came back from my honeymoon I took a bite of a ripe one and saw every star in the universe and then some. I can't speak for how susceptible baccatums, pubescens and frutescens are, though I remember my tabasco peppers being hotter later in the season and me thinking it was my imagination! I also noticed something else. Last year I fertilized with seaweed extract, which is higher in potassium. I have read that potassium helps plants deal with stress (don't ask me how). I did notice that the container plants that I gave the seaweed extract to became less variable, but remained pretty hot and good tasting. So in short, the chocolate habs will most likely be hotter than the caribbean reds. Don't underestimate either of them though, they are both brutally hot. You can't go wrong with the flavor of either of them too. They are both winners. Buon Appetito! Mark in NJ