So just over a year ago, my fiancée and I bought a house on Cape Cod.  We joke that I got a kitchen, he got a garage, and our dog, Ollie, got a yard.  One of the selling points of the house was definitely the almost 2 acres of land that it sat on, with the backyard fully fenced in.  Having rented several houses over the years, never staying anywhere for more then six months or so, I was excited to finally settle in somewhere!  At our rentals, I had attempted to grow some things in containers that we could move around with us, but never had much success (although, to this day, I still have a window box with a VERY healthy chive plant that has lived at four different houses)

our house!  before we got to planting anything...

Psyched to be home owners, we jumped right into things.  We moved into the house in late March and sought out to refurbish the dozen or so raised beds in the backyard.  The bed were less than half full with soil, the wood was rotting out, and one bed was overwhelmed with a huge packasandra (who puts packasandra in a raised bed??)  Getting a late start on the planting season, we managed to grow some potatoes, one sad bussels sprout, some tomatoes, peas, and a single pepper from 3 pepper plants.  All in all, last year was a flop.  What we didn't realize was that the beds had been put in quite a long time ago and the trees had grown to shade in most of the plot.  Oddly enough, the peppers and tomatoes didn't like hanging out in the shade...

the shady backyard garden plot

The summer, we also got a couple of day old chicks, hoping to keep them for eggs.  One turned out to be a rooster, but the other three were lovely, egg-laying hens.  We had fun building them a coop and got a single tiny, perfect, fresh egg from them before the hens were devoured by the local coyotes.  But that's a story for another day.

So, starting in February this year, we got ourselves some new laying hens (not chicks this time) and decided that the wasted space in the front yard was the perfect place to start a NEW garden.  Countless hours, dollars, and trips to Home Depot later, we had eight new 8'x4' raised beds in the front yard.  We trimmed the trees nearby to maximize the sun exposure and after ripping up sod and filling the beds with new loam and soil amendments, I got to planning my new garden space.

installing the new raised beds

Once the new beds were in, I had way too much fun ordering seeds and figuring out what plants I wanted to grow.  It's only the first week of June, but we have 3 beds of potatoes (which are growing like CRAZY), one bed of sweet potatoes, 12 tomato plants, 6 pepper plants, and one eggplant.  We've also got carrots, beets, broccoli, kale, onions, swiss chard, peas, several types of lettuce, summer squash, zucchini, pumpkin, and several herbs, including mint, parsley, sage, basil, and cilantro.  So far, I have only managed to kill 4 broccoli plants (only two are left that I started from seed), one pepper plant (although the others don't look so hot right now...), and one tomato plant.  We have a slight potato beetle problem, but I have been hand picking those, something has been devouring my basil before it can even get started, and probably at least half of the onion transplants didn't take.  I think they are in the shadiest of the beds and suffering because of it. 

The weather forecast for this week is rainy, cold, and windy, but assuming we get a break one of these evenings, we will be mulching the beds with salt marsh hay.  All this rain is good for the plants, which we just fertilized with some chicken manure, but I think they could use some warm sunny days! 

What are you growing this year?  What have you had luck with in the past?  Any advice for me??