Feed the soil to feed the plant!
If your soil is really bad, setup a raised bed preferably 2 feet in height. Minimum is 12 inches. Last thing you want is a dead-panning at the bottom of the root ball. Since this is your home garden, raised bed is an option. I would highly recommend it in your situation.
If you want the plant to help break up the soil, plant buckwheat, fava bean, sweet pea, even corn with its massive tap root will help push organics into the ground. Problem with corn is that its a very heavy feeder of nitrogen. You should plant crimson clover. Crimson clover! not any other kind of clover. Crimson clover will grow even in winter. Plant green manure NOW and mow them down into the ground when you are ready to plant your seedling in spring time. Things I like to plant are mixture of vetch, crimson clover, buckwheat, and fava beans. I plant at rate about 2-3x what is recommended into poor soil or in places where I have lot of weed. fava bean and sweet peas can effectively choke out even crab grass. To help kick start the over wintering plant, I would heavily fertilize it with nitrogen, phosphate, potassium and lime. I would also add sand.
If you go to Johhny's seeds, they have green manure mix. They have lot of good info for back yard gardeners all the way up to commercial growers. I've bought twine for my tomatoes, tomato clips, seeds of all sort. Bit too far for me to buy agribon from them... Agribon is something you might consider using in winter to help with soil building over the winter. Agribon is a row cover.
Oh I would also add about 12" of compost to your clay soil. don't worry, compost will reduce to much smaller volume by spring time. Compost will help break up the clay soil. Sand will help break up the clay and will help with drainage.
Let nature help you with rehabilitating bad soil.
If you are into deep organic method of growing:
try Johnny's seeds, Peaceful Vally farm and garden supply, abundant seed life. Victory seeds. My drip system comes from Drip works. Do a search on any of the name listed.
Books you might be interested are by Elliot Colman. There are also lots of other organic gardening book. Composting is mostly common sense so don't think you need a book on it. Seems bit dumb to me but hey... BTW, we do grow veggies over the winter in Pacific Northwest where its mostly cloudy, wet, and cold most of the winter. Elliot Colman has his farm in Maine and continues to produce veggies all winter long without resorting to gas/electric heated greenhouse.
one year to throw in the towel is doing a dis-service to your garden effort. Some farmers lose two sometimes three years in a row. soil conditioning is ever going effort and never stops. Start up may be hard but its all about the soil. give it another two, three years at your garden and you will be rewarded. Grow simple things like zucchini and tomatoes. These two are usually the ones home gardeners have most success. With hard clay avoid root crop. Onion, carrots, garlic, turnip, beets, potato...
Don't give up yet!!! Persevere!!
(Of course, that runoff makes for some crazy thick tall grass that hubby swears at when he mows the lawn!)
