For Next Year's Garden

We have learned a lot in this short bout of gardening. Next year we want to:

1. Till up more land.  We will use the extra space for more pumpkin vines and more of the things we really liked from this year but haven't had much of -- green beans, peas, carrots.
2. Plant onions and garlic.  We cook with these a lot but didn't think to plant any this year.
3. Plant fewer grape and cherry tomato varieties and more of the bigger ones that are good for canning.
4. Plant earlier.  We realized that we could have planted several of our seeds outdoors much earlier than we did this year.  Even with occasional late snow storms in May, many of the plants that do not do well with transplanting can go into the ground in late April.
5. Rig up a rudimentary greenhouse with plastic sheeting and 1 X 2 lumber pieces, low to the ground.  With some strategically placed slits in the plastic we think we can let in plenty of water while still keeping in enough heat to protect the seeds and young plants.
6. Plant more things directly into the ground and not transplant as much.  We have noticed a marked difference in the strength and production of plants that were not transplanted.  With the greenhouse system this should be possible.
7. Plant carrots in stages with several re-plantings all summer.  This was recommended by several sources but we didn't get around to doing it this year.  Also, give the carrots lots more space.  We've thought about dropping a new seed into the hole when we pull a carrot to maximize our space and time.
8. Cage or trellis the tomatoes and peas much earlier.
9. Possibly plant only one zucchini and one yellow squash.  Those have been prolific producers and we're running out of things to do with them.  If my freezing experiment goes well I'd like to plant as much as we did this year because we can eat frozen stuff for a long time.  If the freezing does not go well I'm happy with just one plant of each.
10. Maybe start tomatoes earlier.  We're struggling with this decision.  Tomatoes take so long to get going that it would be nice to start them earlier.  However, they would need to be moved from small peat pots into larger pots and kept inside for several weeks to avoid snow.  If they stay in pots all summer we run into problems with getting them enough water because this climate is extremely dry and pots are difficult to keep sufficiently watered. And there isn't an easy way to water pots if we're gone for several days at a time.  I think we could start Siberian tomatoes (the colder weather variety) inside in March and then move them outside into our greenhouse contraption in April.  Maybe.
11. Plant lettuces.  They're a cooler weather plant (I had no idea!) and we could definitely put those in our green house in the spring.
12. Maybe apply some sort of weed killing treatment to the soil early on in the spring.  The weeds have been out of control and it's very frustrating.  We're conflicted about this, too.  On one hand we like the idea of keeping this organic and using only natural products.  On the other hand -- Weeds!  Argh!
13. Plant some strawberries and raspberries.  I made jam out of the sour cherries in my back yard and it's delicious.  I'd like to make more jam of different kinds because we like it but it's difficult to find any in the grocery store without HFCS in it.

So far this is what we've discussed doing differently.  I'll probably be updating this list as the garden progresses through the end of summer and into fall.