Hi there,

We have raised bed veggie gardens for the first time this year, and have been reading Ed Smith's book. What isn't clear to me is what to do with plants at the end of the season...do you cut them down but leave the roots intact to decay in ground, or do you pull the entire plant and compost it. Same for cover crops: when you are ready to plant and need to remove the cover crop, do you till them under (the book is pretty down on tilling) or do you cut back but leave the root in place.

Normally I'd just pull or till, but this book seems pretty big on maintaining the soil structures established by worms and root innervation. We have tomatoes, summer and winter squash, soybeans, peas, corn, okra, lima beans, and some annual and perrineal herbs. For cover crops, we use Austrian peas and annual alyssum. Our soil is sandy and pretty poor--except for the manure and compost we've added, there's little organic matter and we're trying to nurture the worm population.

thanks