I don't know about your planting dates, but you can find that on the internet. Find out what zone you are in, do a search for planting zones. Then find out your last frost date, also easy to find in a search. For example, here in north Miss. around Tupelo our average last frost day is april 15. After that we are pretty sure we can put out our warm season veggies like tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, squash.
What I would highly recommend for you is to build some simple raised beds. You can use cinder blocks, wood, brick, railroad ties (don't use treated lumber due to the toxins). You can lay cardboard or newspaper over the area you want your raised bed, wet it, and then add compost and garden soil. Do a little research on "raised beds", "square foot gardening" and "lasagna gardening." it will be very enlightening and definitely something to put yourself into. Most experts recommend like 4x4 foot raised beds. you can do squares, rectangles, triangles, whatever at various spots with mulch or grass mowed between your beds. It is also a good idea to rotate your crops from year to year, whereby you plant tomatoes in area 1, for example, and the following year, plant something else there. That way if viruses or insects are there that love tomatoes, they will not increase and take hold by having tomatoes there every year. Yuou can read about this under "crop rotation."
I plant my veggies in with my flower beds, but I am seriously considering the geometric shaped raised beds becoz I want to get more food production. Hope this helps you some.
Laurie

Knowledge is power! I would recommend you go to your OK forum and ask them for a really good book on vegetable gardening in your state. Then read it carefully and follow its suggestions. I agree with Lgal that raised beds are a great way to go. You can get alot more production from alot less space, with alot less work, and if you care to, you can make them attractive too. A good book to check into is "Designing the New Kitchen Garden" by Jennifer Bartley. It's available on Amazon and gives great information about gardening in raised beds.
Don't skip the region specific info though. In your hot, dry, windy area it will be the difference between success and failure. You are wise to be thinking about next year now. One of the caveats of good gardeners (especially veggie gardeners) is to always think at least a season ahead.