Habanada

For the following discussion, all measurements, observations and tastings were done in October, 2020, using 9 plants grown in 10 litre pots.
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• Heat
Whoever named ‘Habanada’ was trying to be clever. Apparently, ‘haba’ is taken from the first two syllables of ‘habanero’, while nada means 'nothing’ in Spanish. Putting the two parts together gives ‘nothing habanero’, which undoubtedly refers to a habanero with no heat.
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Clever though it is, the name is wrong: our tastings showed that of the 9 plants we grew in 2020, only 1 produced heatless fruit. The other 8 yielded fruit with some heat, albeit in tiny amounts.
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Our tastings were done in the latter half of October, and we know from experience that chillies harvested in the cool conditions of autumn can be milder than those harvested in the heat of summer. Ergo, Habanada may be hotter during the summer months – a presumption  that, alas, we didn’t test.
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• Fruit shape and size
A high proportion of fruit harvested from our 2020 plants were of a reasonable size, i.e., between 45 and 70mm in length. Masses of smaller ones were also produced, which indicates that yield potential is very high – all that’s needed is some sort of boost that makes the smaller fruit grow bigger. It might be worth either substituting a bigger pot for the 10 litre ones we used or growing the plants in the ground.
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The larger fruit are shaped like elongated cones. The smaller ones are shorter in relation to their length and are mostly coned shaped, though some look like miniature tops.
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 • Yields
On the 9th of November, 2020, Mikka and David Tamlyn from Weymouth harvested about 13 kg of fruit from the 9 plants of Habanada that we’d been growing since spring. They stripped the plants almost completely, taking fruit that were big and small, as well as green and ripe. We made a few modest harvests earlier in the season, so total yields would have been slightly bigger if they were included in the weighing.
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David and Mikka make fermented hot sauces under the brand ‘Weymouth 51’. Some of our chillies go into their sauces, which are fermented and quite delicious. We like them because they are different to most sauces we’ve tasted – they can be bought on-line as well as directly from them at the various events they sometimes attend.