By Iggy Wana, Gardening Editor
Twelfth-grader, Herbert Farmer, has brought in a 103.2-pound
Scotch bonnet. This was a record for a
still green, Caribbean-variety of a hot chili pepper.
Under the guidance of the plant whisperer Doctor Dade,
Sister Sara and interns from Cornville Community College with their EARTH (Eat
A Radish That’s Hot) program, Herb was happy to grow a gigantic, practically
inedible pepper.
He potted seeds that he got from Josephine Holy in a
soilless mix and then fought off the pearly-eyed thrashers, katydids, leaf
miners, white flies, powdery mildew, soft scale, hard scale, hard disk viruses,
software bugs, computer worms, pigs, donkeys, iguanas, deer, goats and park
rangers to name just a few pests.
The single pepper grew over a period of two years to reach
the Super-Duper-Whopper size. This is
the size category designated by the Goodness-Gracious Book of World Records.
Because of its unusually large size and long growing time,
it is estimated that this Scotch bonnet will read 100,000,000 to 350,000,000 on
the Scoville scale. For comparison, most
jalapeño peppers have a heat rating of 2,500 to 8,000 Scoville units. This pepper would leave a ring of fire on
every table it graced.
Niles Chair, “Chair”man of the Gifffft Hill School Bored,
said that as part of the EARTH program students prepared hors d'oeuvres using a
smaller, quarter-pounder Scotch bonnet.
“When they cut the pepper, there was a mushroom-shaped cloud and sinuses
were cleared at Skinny’s, 6.2 Tuff miles upwind.”
As part of the GffffHS Seed2Table project, Herb coolly sold
the hot pepper to Ronald Klunkerberg who owns Klunkerberg Pizza in Cruz
Bay. “Nothing is inedible,” said
Klunkerberg. He is a widely-recognized
expert in these matters.
Herb Farmer has now graduated, but the money he raised goes
to the Gifffft Hill School to buy seeds to cover the island with hot peppers…
and probably Christmas holly and catch ‘n’ keep.
Heard in the Street
Isn’t it always the way… wealthy Winnebago heiress Elsa
Engle won the 155-million-dollar Virgin Lottery.
The Office of Virgin Lottery emphatically denies that they
cannot find the $155,000,000.
