Pulling plants vs Cutting off at soil level

This has probably been discussed before, but I couldn't find a thread with the search.   I see a lot of posts about pulling plants out of the beds for end-of-season clean-up, but very few posts about cutting off the old plants during the cleanup. Wondering how most gardeners handle this.

I never pull plants out of the gardens unless they are diseased, with the exception of Marigold plants which attract root nematodes and it is good to get them out of the garden. When plants are done, I cut them off flush with the soil level and let the roots decompose to open airways in the soil and feed the earthworms and microbes. A plus for me is that it does not remove any soil from the gardens.  I always did this with the in-ground gardens, and continued it when I moved to raised bed gardens. This has always worked well with everything from beans to squash to corn. Of course, it doesn't apply to root crops such a radish, turnip, and beets.

Thoughts on the pros/cons of pulling plants vs cutting them off and leaving roots in ground?

I kinda feel it, to know what to do.  No set rule.  I think most are just cut and left in though.  I know some folks pull the brassicas to avoid club foot or some other disease they get.

I cut at the base, chop up the plant and lay back on top of the soil but diseased plants get pulled and tossed in the firepit for bio-char and potash.

In my climate and location, we get all kinds of diseases and insects.  For a lot of my vegetables, I remove as much as possible.  For instance, I get early blight every year so I try to do things that will prevent it as much as possible.  Early blight, ln my climate, will live over the winter on tomato debris, therefore I try to remove everything relating to the tomatoes, including roots and mulch.  Also, I get some kind of little white worm on my corn stalks, so I try to remove every stalk and root.  Also, I succession plant almost in every bed.  For instance, I just removed my tomato plants and will be planting peas within a week.  The large number of tomato roots would get in the way of preparing the bed for the peas.  etc.  So, for some things I remove the roots and for other veggies i do not remove the roots depending on the circumstances.

I do both. If I'm going to replant (succession planting) I pull the plant and the largest roots so I can mix in more compost. Others I cut off below the soil line and leave to decompose.

I learned one plant that I cannot cut off at ground level and leave the roots to decompose - Basil.   A few days ago I cut off all of the basil plants to dry the leaves for the winter herb rack.   Today I noticed that the roots are sending up new shoots from the underground stems.  Since we don't need any more dried basil, I pulled out the roots and composted them.

Thanks for the tip about basil.

I finished pulling the eggplants, tomatoes and peppers today, pulling out just the larger roots.  These beds will be planted with winter crops.

sanderson wrote:Thanks for the tip about basil.

I finished pulling the eggplants, tomatoes and peppers today, pulling out just the larger roots.  These beds will be planted with winter crops.

I'm waiting for the heat to go down to the 75's for my peppers to grow. The bush is large with some peppers on them. I pulled my tomatoes and planted four more. one succumbed to flea beetles. Eggplants still going, quite large. I did not leave to tomatoes stumps or cucumber stumps in the ground. I will leave the peppers and eggplant stumps cut at ground level probably in November.