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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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As far as I remember my G3-21 PD plant produced a lot of peppers in the early season that all had a very unusual, pointy shape. It didn't produce any new fruits later in the season so I don't know if it would produce bonnets with the "proper" shape...
 
This is sort of a "Where's Waldo" picture taken last July, but the G2-19 parent of all my G3 seeds is hiding in amongst the turmeric plant here.

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You'd be hard pressed to find them in this photo, but there are a few unripe pods in there. The volunteer seedlings underneath are from the pods visible in the winter 21-22 picture linked in my previous post.

These are three of those unripe pods after ripening, harvested last October.

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Late to the party. First, I need to correct my most recent post above; the plant hiding in amongst the monster turmeric is a G2-18, not G2-19. All of my G3 seeds are from that one plant... I'll have to check again to see if I have any G3-21 left, but I know I have G3-20 and G3-22. G3-19 doesn't exist in my collection. I think I previously recommended against my G3-22 seeds, but those are from an earlier harvest where I left the seeds in the pods too long and they have a sort of grey colour. I do have 'clean' G3-22 seeds from the pods pictured above if anyone is interested. The only possible cross these might have from my property is with a tepin located 20 or so yards away. Devv is the original source for the tepin seeds. I don't know what generation this plant is, but it's true to form. I can't speak to what pollen might have come in from elsewhere, hundreds of yards away.

That G2-18 plant pictured above, grown from seed harvested from a plant grown from one of the original four seeds windchicken sent me back in '16*, is looking pretty dead in its current OW state. I'll still give it a chance outside in a few weeks, but I'm not holding out much hope. A combination of being outcompeted by the turmeric (after the first year) and an exceptionally early killing frost last October gave it inadequate time to recover from being repotted before I had to bring it in for the winter. (The tepin, on the other hand, is raring to go.)

*I was going to call those original four seeds G1-16 (or maybe G1-15), but rereading the OP, I think they should really be called G1-13. Maybe @windchicken will comment on this point.

MarcV said:
What are the oldest generation papa dreadie seeds that are currently still around? 🤔
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So, yeah, the oldest gen seeds I have are the G2-18 that produced the parent of the pods pictured above. I have enough of those to send you a few, but it might be better for me to do a germination test first, though they have been kept refrigerated. I still think the bad result you had from your G3-21 plant is a fluke, but certainly the closer to the original, the better.

Grass Snake said:
I have seeds from 2016. Not thinking it's the oldest seeds around but old enough to question the viability. My memory is a little fuzzy but I'm sure they came from a pod in a sfrb deal. I should probably try and grow them out.
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That's pretty cool if you have some PDSB seeds distributed outside windchicken's offer that started this thread back in '16. Let us know if you do grow them and how they turn out.

Mine often have a stinger on the first few pods to set, but then develop the typical Scottish tam shape. As best I can recall now, they have never had the spikiness described in some of the earliest posts in this thread.
 
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Would love to try a plant from older generation seeds but it's already quite late in the season to start one now. Maybe in the fall, then I could overwinter the plant for next season...
 
Sawyer said:
*I was going to call those original four seeds G1-16 (or maybe G1-15), but rereading the OP, I think they should really be called G1-13. Maybe @windchicken will comment on this point.
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Hey John! I am so honored that this thread is still going, and thrilled that there are highly skilled chile heads devoting their time and resources to the Papa Dreadie. I'm not even sure the last time I grew Erin's wonderful namesake pepper, but at this point I regret that I didn't give it the isolated grow that it so very much deserved. I do have this video from what was probably my last Papa Dreadie grow, in 2017, and I believe some of those pods did present with the spikes you mentioned. Next season I can hopefully do an isolated seed increase using the seeds I do still have on hand, which would be from that 2017 grow. I love how you have created a labeling system for the individual seeds from each generation, if I understand correctly what I am seeing?

 
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Yes, it helps me keep things straight with whatever species I save seed for from year to year. The G1 for the original seeds you sent out is somewhat arbitrary and ignores the years of effort leading up to then. The year is just the year the seeds were harvested.

PS - Great video, by the way.
 
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Put some G3-21 seeds in the soil today 😁
...and I added a couple Beth Boyd seeds because I think she deserves a memorial too...

They are not in the propagator or on a heat mat so germination may take a little longer... we'll see what comes out of it...
 
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The older generation seeds didn't have to wait all that long after all... planted 4 G3-2020 and 4 G2-2018 seeds and they are all germinating, although one of the 2020 seeds appears to be struggling to come up and may not make it (and another might be a helmet head). One of the 2018 seeds is still in the "hook" stage but I expect that it will do just fine...

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Mine look pretty much the same as in the post above. no signs of the typical bonnet shape until now.
Plants had a very tough start and started to fruit quite late.
Harvested the first ripe pod today! They do have a lot of spikey knobs on the skin though. just like the papa dreadie supposed to have.
Spikes are not very visible in the picture but if you touch the peppers you can feel a lot of them.
They don't produce much pods for me. but all pods are very decent in size and no small runty pods.

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Stinger?!
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This are the three papa dreadies i grow this year

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