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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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Uncle_Eccoli said:
 
This is a matter of survival for me, too.   ;)
 
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Just take it day by day, and don't give up. Your plants want to survive just as much as you do. Just give them what they need, try something different if something's not working, and ask for help here... Huge concentration of experts on THP. But if you can keep enough plants alive for long enough, you will have peppers before season's end....
 
Bicycle808 said:
Just take it day by day, and don't give up. Your plants want to survive just as much as you do. Just give them what they need, try something different if something's not working, and ask for help here... Huge concentration of experts on THP. But if you can keep enough plants alive for long enough, you will have peppers before season's end....
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Every word of this is spot on; it ought to head a sticky or something.  To wit: I've got some peppers already and things are looking promising!
 
I planted eleven of these (yellow) in a remote rain garden last week. Sort of a guerilla planting, I guess, I likely won't be able to check on them again until June. But the soil is deep, rich, and well-mulched and from watching radar images, there's been plenty of rain to get them settled in. Plus the whole space is enclosed in tall chain link fence with barbed wire at the top. If they survive and produce, I should have plenty of isolated seeds for these.

I moved my original plant outside today. It was planted 160309. It struggled this winter, but made it through alive. Likewise with one started last year from seed from the first one. Once they perk up and put out some new leaves, I'll post some pictures of them.
 
Bicycle808 said:
Thanks again, TGCM, for the seeds and for everything you do for this community. As usual, I'm growing a bunch of yellow Bonnets (probably 36 plants, plus i got some buddies stoked to take my culls, do I'll be involved with some extras as well) and I'm hoping this will be the year that the Dreadies perform as well for me as they have for other folks on here...
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Update, pics to come: I have been eating ripe Dreadies all week. I got six plants in a raised bed out back, and I gave two plants to my buddy Dave-- he was stoked to harvest his first two homegrown Yella Scotch Bonnets yesterday; both came off the same Dreadie plant, grown from seeds I got from TGCM.

But yeah, I gotta post some pics. The pods' shapes are still a bit irregular on this first wave of pods, but the spikes and warts are presenting nicely. One thing the pics will not show is the flavor; we've been podtesting these, head-to-head, versus other Yella Bonnets and all my chile buddies agree that the initial sweet fruitiness of the Dreadies is tough to beat.
 
The heat is unbeareble... we are at 40.8°C shadow temperature in the back yard when I'm writing this. That's 105.44°F... Highest temp ever recorded.
And no significant rain for weeks... I hope this isn't the new normal...
 
One year that was really hot i grew MOA yellows. I didnt get many pods but not too bad. Dreadies come on a little slow here but still do very well even in the heat. MOA red was a very strong and early producer in high temps. TFMs look like they will do ok this year but its looking like the Dreadies are going to do slightly better.
 
Flavor....its gunna be hard to beat the Dreadies.
 
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