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P. Dreadie Memorial Group Grow 2016

Long-time THP veterans mourned the loss last August of Amarillo, Texas musician/songwriter/silversmith/chilehead Erin Mason, known to us here on the boards as P. Dreadie. Erin was an enigma, one of the most interesting and creative, yet gentle and loving guys I ever knew. Many of us may be unaware that he played harmonica in one of the original Austin, Texas bands of the early 1970s "Cosmic Cowboy" era, Alvin Crow and the Pleasant Valley Boys. When Erin decided to step off of Alvin's perpetually-touring bus and return to Amarillo, he travelled to Jamaica, fell in love with the Reggae beat, collected the best Scotch Bonnet fruit he could find, and his alter-ego Papa Dreadie was born.

In 2013 Erin sent me a few pods of the Scotch Bonnets he had been breeding, carefully selected descendants of the original fruit he brought back from the Caribbean all those years ago. I harvested every single seed from those pods, and stored them away, as I focused increasing attention on other varieties. When his wife Liz gave us the news last August that Erin had passed, I knew what I had to do with those seeds: a community grow in his memory. I have already shared about half of them, and I will continue to share them with experienced growers of the Scotch Bonnet until they are gone.

Papa Dreadie Scotch Bonnet Select, grown by Erin in 2013:

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Lifetime memories posted by Liz Mason on Erin's FB page. Liz is an extremely talented professional photographer:

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The legendary bus:

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Very nice shapes indeed! Does the shape vary from plant to plant or are they all similar?
 
The last month or so of indoor growing, I battled aphids in hand to hand combat and my plants looked like dog crap at mid-May plant-out.
This picture is flattering.
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But the soil in my beds has matured well and the adult plants look much, much better.

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Nice color, good crinkle, but BARELY ANY FLOWERS OR PODS.
The veg state is so intense though I'm not too worried yet.
I'm 7a, and shouldn't see frost before mid-Oct.
Rain has been decent and heat bareable.




All eggs are not in one basket. I have one in a small pot on the deck that has a few pods coming along.


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So may have enough to supply my breakfast menu at least.
@Sawyer sent two generations of seed last year and I saved from select pods last year.
j
 
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Plants are looking strong and healthy J. If we can just get a little cooler temps I think you'll explode! Looking forward to your harvests.
 
My first ripe papa dreadie g3 2021! It was a relatively small one and not 100% ripe I guess because it wasn't entirely 'orangy' yet but I decided to pick and eat it. It had a strong smell when I cut it open and I expected that I wasn't going to like the taste, but it turned out to taste good and very sweet. At first it was very mild when I started chewing it and I expected it to stay that way. But boy was I wrong! It turned out to be quite hot! This might be a keeper!


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I had a few scotch bonnets from my schneider farm plant that were almost the perfect shape recently but I'm not getting that shape from my papa dreadie. Which doesn't mean they are no good, taste-wise they are great...
 
Hey, Marc, did your P. Dreadie pods develop a more typical shape by season's end last year? As others have mentioned, I've found the earliest pods are often atypical, but improve through the course of the season. It seems like others have had better results from the same batch of seeds, so maybe you just got a bad seed.

I'm renewing the offer described in post #892, itself referencing the earlier post #793. Seeds have been refrigerated except for last year's G3-22 seeds. I have only a very few of those and don't recommend them. The G2-19 (edit: this should be G2-18) parent plant struggled last year and ultimately died (I think, springtime will tell for sure). It was companion planted with turmeric and did really well like that in '21, until the turmeric began to out-compete it. I posted a picture of it from winter '21-'22 in post #900. I have pictures from mid-season last year that I'll post later today if I can find them. Kept intending to separate the plant from the turmeric and repot it in fresh soil alone, giving it a month or so to settle in before bringing it in for this winter. Then the early killing frost in October happened. I rushed the repotting the day before and brought it inside, but it doesn't seem to have survived the stress. Anyway, I'll go back to my G2-19 (edit: G2-18) seeds for a fresh start this year.

In the meantime, anyone interested in getting started with these, send me a pm. I should be able to get seeds in the mail this coming week.
 
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