My garden is still producing peppers, tomatoes, eggplant (small because they were late), cukes, lettuce, radishes, kale, arugula and green beans (2nd crop). We finished the pea crop long ago.
At the end of this month it will start to go down.
When I put it to bed, I will pull all plants and put them in the open compost bin. The deer will enjoy some of it and the rest will turn to compost for next year.
I will put down a layer of chopped straw, compost I made this year, seafood compost (I buy it), seaweed (we live near the sea), small amount of lime and peat moss. I have added grass clippings all summer between the rows to keep the weeds down and that will serve for the nitrogen.
All this will be mixed in a bit with the dirt fork. In the spring the whole thing will be turned again before planting.
When I first started doing the garden it was miserable cloggy clay. Now it is beautiful dark soft soil loaded with earthworms.
This has served us well and we eat out of our garden all summer and early fall.

Our ground is basically clay so we add lots of sand, and some chicken poo for fertilizer. It works well for this area.

We just pull up every thing and put in a compost pile. Then is spring spead and till. We have dug up out potatoes and onions and squash. Tomatoes and peppers still doing well.

I'm ready to amputate my husband's green thumbs this year! Everything grew so well & is still growing. We live in suburbia with a garden down both sides of the house in raised beds (took out all the yucky shrubs). I've canned tomatoes, made vegetarian chili with the squashes, tomatoes & onions, pickled cucumbers, frozen green beans, made mustard relish all from these small areas and that doesn't include all the fresh stuff we've eaten - eggplants, green peppers, banana peppers, lettuces and beets. I shutter to think what he'd do with a "real" garden patch. In a month I'll be taking off all the green tomatoes and making either green tomato salsa or relish.

That is what we have been doing for the last 4 days. I have open blisters on my right hand so am calling it quits for a few days until they heal up. Been cleaning out the dead plant tops, dead heading zinnias, trimming overgrown butterfly bushes, and digging out new beds for next year. I have several plants to put in before winter hits so they will get some root growth before it gets too cold. When the yard starts looking dry and scraggly it gets a clean up and haircut.
The vegetable garden still has to have the sweet potatoes dug but we wait until the first light frost before we do that.
Ann in TN

So I thought this year I would plant alot of tomato plants as that is what I use the most of all year. Here in Northern AZ. we are still in a growing stage due to all the warm weather. Please...someone sit me down and talk to me if I EVER suggest planting 40 tomato plants again. I hope we don't have another month to go!!!! All I want is some time to quilt....LOL!

ours is still producing lots of tomatoes,zukes, some cukes, jalepenos,carrots and banana peppers. Our lettuce is pretty much done,as are the onions. We will pull all the plants when done, then DH will till it under with fresh cow poop (courtesy of a friend) then in the spring, more poop and another till before planting.

I live in S. Florida, so it's an ongoing project.....

This year was a disaster for us! 2 hailstorms/tornado back to back 3 weeks apart sliced and diced everything up into small pieces. Then, the dry spell for weeks and 48 days of 90+ heat fried everything! I have fall greens coming up now; hope they make it. No asparagus, no blueberries, some red raspberries just now ripening; no blackberries. Sigh! Maybe next year.

hee hee! I have lettuce coming out of my ears! I won't shut it down until October when we get our first frost. My tomato plant is starting to wind down. Corn, who knows?? :-) My squash is struggling. Basil is still going crazy! Just have to pick my carrots, peppers, and green onions!