One of our most rascally garden pests is a ground hog.  He loves green beans.  A few summers ago there was a whole family.  We lived right next door then, and the green bean plants were always eaten down to the ground. 

My MIL gets the credit for the wonderful lettuce bed.  I just took over it last year, after it sat for a few years without being used.  It gets just enough sun and between the shade of the garage and the lilac bushes it gets plenty of shade.  I even had lettuce, albeit a  bit strong in August.

I am curious as to what other veggies like shade.  Any suggestions?

My lettuce is still going strong, but what I do is allow the leaf lettuce to get to the size I want and cut it off with scissors about two inches from the ground. I plant in rows a week or so apart, and by the time I get to row three row one has grown back to harvest size.  I can usually do this three times, and there is nothing but the occasional weed or bug in the lettuce.  With the head lettuce I harves the whole head. 

I froze my spinach since I had so many other greens I was overwhelmed, (I love that kind of problem) and tried something new this year.  I froze my radish greens since my radish harvest was such a bust, and I wanted the space for a new crop.  After blanching they werent prickly, and had a slightly milder but similar taste to spinach.  It made me feel a little bit better about my radish failure, and I can try again in the fall.

I agree with courtneyb on the lettuce harvesting.  I get several cutting on my leaf lettuce by just leaving a few inches and cutting the tops off with the scissors.  I haven't tried head lettuce yet but I may have to try some next year. 

I have been washing my lettuce as Ross said, in a washtub.  I keep a second tub, and after swishing it, I move the lettuce to the second tub and water the plants with the dirty water, and if I need to, I was again, but the biggest benifit is when I do it outside near the water hose, I can leave the creepy crawlies outside. 

My lettuce bed is actually a bit too deep.  It is roughly 4 feet deep and 5 feet long.  It would be fabulous if one of the long sides was not up against the garage wall.  Leaning in to weed the middle part of the back, without squishing any plants can be ackward. 

I actually have 4 rows of lettuce.  I put a row of butterhead in the very back because once I thinned it I planned to leave it alone and let it grow.  This was the first year for that, and it worked great.

The three rows off lettuce are the three rows in front of the head lettuce.  I divided the bed in three sections, and had three rows of black seeded simpson, ruby, and a mesclun mix.  I didn't trim down the mesclun mix the same as the lettuce.  I pulled those as the plants became big enough, and smaller plants would fill in soon after.  I tried to plant the rows of lettuce 8-10" apart (they dont behave), and have had more than I have needed this year, but we love fresh salad.

You lose some quality as the summer heats up, but I will keep it going as long as I can, then start over in August.

I do plan to let some of the lettuce go to seed in the fall so I can plant from my own seeds next year.

When it finally gets too cold for lettuce I am probably going to do lettuce in window boxes in my studio like I did last winter.  It did alot better than I would have guessed.

Living plants sound great, and seeing how long you can keep one going sounds kind of interesting, but growing from seed is fun, inexpensive, and extremely easy.  When mine went to seed last year, I had lettuce growing in my flower bed nearby and in the yard this spring.