All I did was lay a 1-2" thick layer of compost over the top as a mulch. I'm mainly trying to go no-dig but if you wanted you could till it in the spring. I take everything that's dead out so there's less work next spring. Takes less stress off of spring garden work haha. If there's time left, cover crops would be a good option I'd imagine.

Grass clippings would probably make a nice mulch next year. I'm going to cut mine up and lay them out in the yard to dry in the sun, then use them as straw. Eliminates smells that grass clipping can often give out when freshly cut. A lot of people like leaves and wood chips but I have trouble with ants taking a liking to those specific mulches. The ants then draw in aphids. Weird.

I try to put at least 1" of compost in each bed in the fall after I have cleaned out the bed. Sometimes I will turn in the compost and sometimes just leave it on top depending on the condition of the soil. Then as I collect and shred the fall leaves I will put about a 2" blanket on each bed and cover the leaves with welded wire fencing to keep them from blowing away.

Amy - I always burn my asparagus cuttings ASAP. I want to kill any asparagus beetles that are using the dead ferns to overwinter. If you didn't have ABs then I suppose you could use them for mulch.

I have never noticed asparagus beetles up to this point. I will look. So far the asparagus ferns are green and standing tall.

Count yourself lucky Amy. They are a pain and difficult to get rid of once you have them. I didn't have them for the first 3 or 4 years after starting my first gus patch but they have been getting worse each year since they showed up. Last year I resorted to spraying pyrethrin a couple times after I stopped harvesting.

I've only had asparagus beetles once, and I laboriously handpicked each and every one of them and dropped it into a bucket of soapy water to drown. I've never seen them since, and the probably was 8 to 10 years ago. It may help that no one near me seems to grow asparagus so maybe the ABs just can't find me. The only other asparagus plants I've ever seen here are about 5 miles from us. Maybe 6 miles. I usually cut down my asparagus plants after they turn brown (which they did the other night when we were below freezing for about 8 hours) and throw them on the compost pile. Doing that just makes it easier for me to heap up a bunch of compost and mulch on top of the asparagus bed. Since it tends to pop up out of the ground here very early (January last year) because we have just enough warm winter temperatures, I think, to allow it to wake up early, I put the mulch on heavy and thick to try to keep the ground cooler so the spears won't pop up out of the ground too early and freeze. It tends to pop up out of the ground too early and freeze anyway, but it isn't because I'm not trying to prevent it from doing that.

I'm only on Year 2 of asparagus (In fact, I have many questions when I start harvesting them for the first time next spring) and haven't seen asparagus beetles. However, I seem to attract all insects so I'm sure they will show up. One other neighbor has asparagus in her garden.

Dawn, y'all must have gotten colder and/or stayed colder than we did. My asparagus is still green and blowing in the wind. I need to cut it back and many other garden clean up chores.

I still haven't planted garlic. Maybe this weekend. I need to find a way to protect it from the chickens. They have been so bad during the past week.

Y'all are lucky that the ABs haven't found your gus patches. They are now 3rd on my list of most hated garden pests behind squash bugs and Japanese Beetles. I hand picked a lot of adults early on when I was still harvesting but they kept coming back in droves and once the eggs started hatching the larvae were out of control. They seemed to like my newest 3 year old purple asparagus more than the green. The only asparagus I have seen near my garden is growing at the Botanical garden's harvest garden about a mile from my house.

I always put some welded wire fencing over my garlic beds after I plant to keep the squirrels from digging up the cloves and replacing them with acorns or hickory nuts. It should work for chickens as well. After the garlic sprouts I remove the fencing and mulch with 3-4" of shredded leaves and replace the fencing to keep the leaves from blowing off.

LoneJack, I'm thinking of doing that as well with the tomato cages I made last season. They are only held together with zip ties, so I would have the option of laying them flat for storage. I opened one up to put over a newly mulched/ready for the winter raised bed and it's kept the chickens out. That's a a plus that it keeps the leaves/mulch from blowing out as well.

I googled a picture of the asparagus beetle, so I can be on the lookout for them.

Jennifer, Parts of our county got really cold. We only got moderately cold, but we were well below freezing for a long time and had a hard freeze for several hours two nights in a row. The frost was so thick on the plants before sunrise that it could have passed for a light dusting of snow.

At our Mesonet station, the overnight lows on Saturday and Sunday were 22 and 27 respectively, and both nights we were below freezing by bedtime (and we tend to go to bed pretty early) and still below freezing at sunrise. At our house, it was a few degrees warmer each night, but still very cold. There's not much green left in the fields or along the roadsides or in yards, except for the green foliage on all the trees. The weather had stayed so hot so long that the leaves just haven't budged much, in terms of autumn color, but since we turned colder they are starting to change color now. Granted, it is mostly a yucky brown so still not really colorful. Many trees are still at least 90% or 95% green. When they stay green this long, the leaves usually hang on forever and then turn brown and fall all at once. I don't think we're going to have an especially pretty autumn down here. The poor butterflies are out searching, searching, searching for nectar and not finding much of anything. We still have some autumn sage in bloom and a bit of the tiny white fall asters in the fields didn't freeze as they were protected by taller grasses, but in general, the butterflies had tons of food available last week and almost none this week.

Jack, We do not, so far, have Japanese beetles this far south. At least not many of them. Some years I'll see one or two here or there but we don't have the huge infestations common where you live. I know that some folks in NE OK do have the JBs pretty bad. Maybe some of the folks as far south as central OK have them. I hope the JBs and ABs never make it this far south in heavy numbers. We do have tons of spider mites, grasshoppers, squash bugs, stink bugs, leaf-footed bugs and squash vine borers so we certainly aren't pest-free. I haven't seen many grasshoppers since the freeze hit, so maybe they're done for the year. Usually, though, their numbers drop significantly beginning in mid- to late-July and this year they didn't, so we have had grasshoppers just forever and forever this year. I'm ready for them to be gone. When the green pastures and fields dry up, the grasshoppers fly into green irrigated yards and gardens by the hundreds and it can be quite a sight (an ugly sight) to see. They can eat a garden down to the ground if you don't fight them tooth and nail. We still have bees out searching for food, but I haven't seen many yellow jackets, wasps or hornets since the freeze hit. Yay for that.

Oddly, I don't have much squirrel trouble in the garden at all. I rarely see one near the garden. Perhaps the 8' tall deer fence largely keeps them out, or maybe it is just that we have 10+ acres filled with native pecans, hickories and oaks, so the squirrels have a lot more acres to search for food. Our little orange tabby cat, Pumpkin, will chase the squirrels relentlessly, so maybe he gets credit for the squirrel-free garden. I grow garlic in three different areas, so even if the pests find it in one spot and destroy it, I have it in other widely scattered places too.

It is so cold here today! We sure went from awfully hot to awfully cool in the blink of an eye. It is supposed to rain, but not enough to actually get the ground wet and help us here in terms of moisture. They have dropped our chance of rain from 50% to 30% and, if it does rain, they say we'll get less than 0.10", so not much moisture is expected to actually fall.

Dawn