For once in my gardening life, I managed not to buy too much bean seed. I will end up with five 25-foot double rows of bush beans and maybe three stands of lima pole beans. This is about as conservative as I get.

My usual pattern is to buy so many varieties that I end up with several partial envelopes of leftover seed, unless I can find space in the garden for more beans. The problem begins in January, when I’m leafing through the seed catalogs and my self-restraint dissolves in those warm-weather fantasies that take the chill off of winter. Page after page of green ones, yellow ones, purple ones, black ones, striped ones, speckled ones I want to grow them all.

As shoes were to Imelda Marcos, so beans are to me.

I suppose it was the thought of doing all the work that beans entail that got the better of me this year and prompted me to curtail my seed purchases. Yet beans are still my thing. Last year, after the deer routed my crop when it was barely out of the ground, my heart sank a bit every time I walked into my garden. My garden without beans was a much less tantalizing place.

I have no idea why I find beans so fascinating, nor do I remember when I first realized that bean lust held me in its grip. What’s more, this is not a particularly pleasant problem to have, and I would gladly trade it in for an infatuation with, say, tomatoes.

At least with tomatoes, people line up at your door, ready to take the extras off your hands. Your friends are grateful to receive them. But when you offer people beans, you’re suddenly as popular as the brother-in-law who just got into the siding business and thinks you’re his next commission.

People who know that beans don’t grow in a can instantly recognize your generous offer as an invitation to a labor-intensive kitchen activity that the Green Giant and mass production made obsolete sometime before World War II. They also know that they can stock up on green beans when they go on sale three cans for a dollar.

These people are smart. Shelling peas are the only garden vegetable that requires more kitchen prep time. Our grandmothers thought nothing about trimming and snapping beans for a large meal, but today it’s not something most people do without feeling like martyrs.

Growing beans also is a literal pain in the back. When the beans come on, as they say, you have to pick them daily. Serious bean growers who don’t want to be overwhelmed with having to eat and process all their beans at once may stagger their plantings into three or four sowings, up to a week apart. While that means you’ll harvest fewer beans every day, you’ll have to keep doing it longer and pay more visits to the chiropractor.

A couple of years ago I thought I’d abandon bush beans and plant nothing but pole varieties. Somehow, watching the vines creep just doesn’t pack the same thrill as being able to gaze down a lush row of bush beans.

Pole beans also take longer. While most bush beans can be picked seven or eight weeks from germination, pole beans can take 10 or 11 weeks.

If you plant bush beans now, you’ll be eating them by mid-July. With pole beans you’re almost into August.

Longer growing time also means more watering and weeding, and more time for the bean beetles to have their way with your crop.

This year, the limas are the only pole means I’ll be growing. I’ll be on my hands and knees tending the three varieties of green beans, the Royal Burgundies and the Golden Rods.

When I plant bush beans I do myself one small favor. I plant double rows, which economizes when I water, cuts down on weeding and makes the mulch go further. To plant the double row, I draw two furrows 18 to 24 inches apart, and space that set of rows 3 to 4 feet from the next one. I then lay a soaker hose down the middle of each double row, and when the beans are a hand-width’s high, I do a thorough weeding and begin to put down mulch.

When she’s not writing about foods and gardening, Gwyn Mellinger is teaching journalism at Baker University. Her phone number is (785) 594-4554.