I got another plot!! Can the world get better? I'm not sure

Growing Gardens is the organization that manages the Boulder community gardens. There's quite a demand for plots, so if you get one and don't take care of it - prepare, weed, actually try to grow something - they take the plot back and give it to someone who will. And on August 14 for plot #308, that someone was me!!!!!!

I have only a 1/3 plot right now (18' x 9'?). I've maxed it out - I can barely walk around. With the addition of a full plot (18' x 27'?), my gardening space quadrupled in 1 day! There are not words to describe how happy this makes me. I'm beyond exclamation points now. It's just too good.

I have big winter gardening plans this year, mainly focusing on cold frames. My plans were of course bigger than my gardening space (till now!). With no experience and no space, I thought, this was the perfect project ;) But things are coming together...

Last weekend, I attended a workshop on 4-season gardening given by the Boulder Sustainability Education Center. The workshop covered cold-season crop seeding times, temperature requirements, and physical protections: row covers and cold frames. Although I already knew a lot of what they taught, I learned more about times to start seeds and ways to build cold frames that definitely will be vital to my wintertime success.

Fall season crops need to be started now, so they are established and can just "maintain" when the weather gets really cold. However, summer season crops aren't done yet and won't be for at least another month. I was wondering just where in the world I was going to plant these fall-season seeds in the meantime. Voila! A whole new plot!

Plan:
1) prepare soil in new plot, after other guy "moves out". Hopefully he'll leave his good plants...
2) plant lettuce, chard, spinach ,kale, brussel sprouts, broccoli, mache, cabbage, possibly a cold-hardy tomato like Sub-Arctic Maxi or Siberian, just to experiment. Some will be planted in raised beds, others flush to ground, others below ground (~3 beds?)
3)when it gets cold, place cold frames around beds. I want to test which setup stays warmer; seems like raised beds would heat up faster, but I'm wondering if setting a bed a foot into the ground would keep the temperature more stable.
Anyone out there have experience with this?