It's kind of hard for me to say what I'll do different next year. I really have almost no control over most of the variables that occur out there. The chaos means I can't even learn from previous years, since what worked last year is almost guaranteed to NOT work this year. And the only "sensible" choice I could make is the one I never will, to give up and stop planting ANYTHING.
I've already more or less decided to chuck the lablabs. With one plant flowering two years ago (too late for seed to be saved) and NONE this year, I've more or less gotten the message that all of the edible seeded and vegetable approved strains are just too long season for as far north as I am. The only lablab that can take things up here is Ruby Moon, and that isn't a good one for eating, so I have no interest.
Gourds are probably out too. Mine did alright but they take up a lot of space; space that could go to other more useful things.
I'll probably start some seed alliums in a few days (the seed ones get inside treatment so they can go out as plants in the spring. It's usually too cold over the winter for direct seeding) I may do some of the bulbs over the winter in pots as well, so I have the mobility of being able to move them back and forth between the outside and inside as weather demands (The garlic does better fall planted outside, but the last two years we have had some unusually cold and wet periods that proved too much for the bulbs) There is also the fact that I am toying with using some of the allium plants as defense items (I have read that squirrels and deer find the smell of Allium roseum so repulsive they wont get near it, so I have this theory that, if I put a plant in each hill of corn I am planting, it might keep the critters away long enough to give them a half decent chance of making it to a size beyond critter interest.
Actually the corn patch is going to get a little tricky anyway, since it's basically going to end up doing double duty in a sort of pseudo-three sisters (or more accurately two sisters, since I am not putting in anything squash like. Unless you consider the allium sister 3*) Early in the year I'm sowing the whole thing with those weirdo vetch seeds (the ones I found in the lentils, that I can't tell if they are really weird vetch or really weird lentils) They are there for a bit of green manure, except I'm not planning to chop them down (well not all of them) Ones I have to take down to plant the corn I will, but the ones in between are staying as is, so I hopefully can get more seed out of them to keep the line going (the company whose lentils were providing them switched suppliers, so what I have is what I am going to have to work with from now on.)
Beyond that its still pretty flexible. More peas, now that I'm skipping the favas? Less rice beans, to make room for more cowpeas and adzukis? (maybe I'll even get around to the mungs this year). I know I'm doing barley, but if it get done early enough can I sneak some wheats in too? Who knows?
so can start researching next years experiments for the main and raised gardens. dw has already informed me that she wants garden peas, summer/ winter squash after that it's mine. 
