2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

[Decoy1]

@Triffid How extremely interesting! Quite a story and amazing detective work on your part. I imagine it helped a little that Dunahoo is an unusual name.

And so rewarding that a really good bean has emerged from the muddle. I assume you must be the first person to grow it for the network. It will be interesting to see what emerges next year. Will you be planning to grow both the beans which Janice sends and the ones you've pictured above to establish whether they are indeed one and the same?

 

[flowerbug]

One of the network beans I opted for this year was ‘Sallee Dunahoo Family White Greasy’.
As the plants grew they put on a wildly varied display of phenotypes, including a bush bean, long-podded McCaslan look-alike, small flat-podded type and a greasy cut-short. The crop was so diverse that I thought it would have been very odd indeed for any gardener to grow and save these together, without selection. So, what really happened to these beans?I had to find out…

I was able to find the name of the originator in a thread from 2013 - a user named MarshallSmyth had requested the beans from Janice Dunnahoo, née Sallee, c. 2010.
Fortunately, after a little detective work I managed to find Janice Dunnahoo’s contact information, and she responded! Here’s what I learned:

• The family bean is not a mix. It is exclusively a greasy cut-short with plump squarish white seeds.

• They were passed down matrilineally, by the Napier and Combs family, and have nothing to do with her father’s or husband’s families (Sallee & Dunnahoo). She comments that they should be named the Napier-Combs Family Greasy or something to that effect.

• The other types of bean in the ‘Sallee Dunahoo’ mixture are likely to be seeds from Amish markets that Janice picked up in Kentucky on the same trip where she collected the family greasy cut-short beans. But she didn’t mix them together before she sent them to MarshallSmyth, and is unsure how they ended up that way.

It is a weird turn of events and it illustrates that ‘Sallee Dunahoo Family White Greasy’ doesn’t really exist as a variety, named after families that never grew it and mixed up with other beans that were never grown with it.

i can only guess that when Marshall was facing a move he may have sent beans to others to try to get his collection into the hands of people who liked beans. i also recall him mentioning a can of extras that he put all together so perhaps somehow those got to someone who just gave them the most prominent name? or something like that?

i now try to keep a label in the container of every bean that i'm not shelling at the moment and often there's a slip in those too now. they may not all have names yet, but at least the year grown gets added as i'm going along.

 

[flowerbug]

Having some great fun collecting & shelling some of the dried, later maturing pole pods trickling in.

Given how much mental energy I divert *worrying* about how well everything is doing (especially network beans!!!) during July and August, it's a HUGE relief to start counting the eggs in the proverbial basket.

yes! my favorite time of the season.

 

[Greasy]

i can only guess that when Marshall was facing a move he may have sent beans to others to try to get his collection into the hands of people who liked beans. i also recall him mentioning a can of extras that he put all together so perhaps somehow those got to someone who just gave them the most prominent name? or something like that?

i now try to keep a label in the container of every bean that i'm not shelling at the moment and often there's a slip in those too now. they may not all have names yet, but at least the year grown gets added as i'm going along.

 

[Greasy]

New member, First post, I grew 4 seeds this year of the Sallie Donahuee that i got from Russ that came out all beautiful greasys. Any ideal what county in Kentucky this greasy came from (Napier -Combs Family) I mainly collect Greasy Beans From Southeastern Kentucky.

 

[ducks4you]

from Central IL. Be sure to put your location with your avatar bc I will forget where you live next time that you post.

 

[Triffid]

i can only guess that when Marshall was facing a move he may have sent beans to others to try to get his collection into the hands of people who liked beans. i also recall him mentioning a can of extras that he put all together so perhaps somehow those got to someone who just gave them the most prominent name? or something like that?

This all happened long before my time on this forum, but on the old posts I found, Marshall refers to a mixture as Sallee-Dunnahoo beans and mentions more than one family variety so I think there was some confusion prior to relocating the collection. It's likely that wires got crossed somewhere in communication with Janice
Unfortunately I really do not know much about this Marshall fellow, except that I owe them a great debt of gratitude for their conservation and getting this variety out there into wider circulation.

@Decoy1 Yes, hopefully, it would be nice to grow them side-by-side for comparison. I'll include the greasy cut-shorts in this year's Seed Circle as I believe you and Galina would really enjoy them, and 2024 is far too long to wait!

 

[Triffid]

New member, First post, I grew 4 seeds this year of the Sallie Donahuee that i got from Russ that came out all beautiful greasys. Any ideal what county in Kentucky this greasy came from (Napier -Combs Family) I mainly collect Greasy Beans From Southeastern Kentucky.

Hi Greasy, welcome!
Based on what I could find just looking up the family name, it would appear to be local to Perry County. But don't quote me on that. 😳

 

[Decoy1]

@Decoy1 Yes, hopefully, it would be nice to grow them side-by-side for comparison. I'll include the greasy cut-shorts in this year's Seed Circle as I believe you and Galina would really enjoy them, and 2024 is far too long to wait!

That will be great. I'd very much like to grow them (sooner than 2024!) based on your description, and my recent conversion to greasy beans .

 

[meadow]

I was able to find the name of the originator in a thread from 2013 - a user named MarshallSmyth had requested the beans from Janice Dunnahoo, née Sallee, c. 2010.
Fortunately, after a little detective work I managed to find Janice Dunnahoo’s contact information, and she responded! Here’s what I learned:

Wow! Now that's some sleuthing!! Thank you for sharing that very interesting information.