I have a brand new The Complete Pond Builder: Creating a Beautiful Water Garden book. The cost of the book was $27.95. I am looking to trade for unusual canna, banana trees, and or passiflora. I don't always receive the e-mails from gardenweb. My e-mail address is melis001@hotmail.com Thank you :) Melissa

Just to be a little more specific, I'm most interested in purple-color beans, any lesser known types of kale or spinach, and lesser known tomato varieties. I'm glad to trade anything I have for these or any other unusual herbs or veggies.

Sending you an e-mail ~ Judy

I got a Red E Ventricosum banana late this spring. It did well in a pot getting quite large. About July I put it in the ground and did okay for awhile then started growing backwards (declining).. its pretty small right now..it really does dislike the hotter night temps as Eric (a previous poster) mentioned. I have grown both the green and red ones from seed in pots in S. Louisiana and they did quite well. They can get huge when they are happy. I'm going to put mine back in a pot again and see if it improves now that the nights are cooling off and it seems to be perking up a little. I think it takes the humidity better in a pot, based on my experiences. I also think they appreciate a little shade in the hottest part of the day here. I also grew these in AZ with basically no humidity and way above 100F temps during the summer they definitely hated that but survived with some shade and a misting system I had set up for my tropicals. My two Zebrina bananas are doing quite well, currently, in the ground and are beautiful. I've killed (or the winter, I should say, killed) 2 Siam Ruby bananas here but that was before I had my greenhouse techniques refined lol. ~Sjn