Each year we try to clean our garden completely during the fall to prepare it for a new gardening season in spring. We remove old dead plants, we harvest every vegetable, remove every root and remove every single weed. Of course, we plant some winter vegetables, but the beds that aren’t used we try to clean up completely.
I used to do this, but lately, I’m becoming sloppy. At first, I was annoyed by the leftover roots and plants, but lately, I’m starting to enjoy them and now I leave roots on purpose. 
Yes, I still harvest most of the vegetables, deep dig my garden, remove bigger plants, but I leave roots in the ground. I remove big and thick roots like tomatoes and peppers which can’t really survive our winters, but the rest of them I leave and wait for the spring to see what I’ll get. I did the exact same thing last year. 

I left a bed of lettuce roots intact. I didn’t even deep dig it to see what I’ll get from them and I can say that I’m really satisfied. I got a bunch of baby lettuces and chicory. 

They look even better than the ones I usually get when sowing early winter/spring lettuce.

I also left a few garlic cloves in the ground and now I have baby garlic growing out of them. I still haven’t decided if I will use it as green garlic of divide it and use it as regular garlic in summer.

This year I tried leaving a few kales. Kale can survive our winter when they are not too harsh. They are very frost tolerant and their taste improves if they get freeze but on many occasions, our winters, especially during January can be very harsh and my kale on many occasions completely froze. This year we had a mild winter and my kale looks great.

 I also left some carrots and beets but I still haven’t seen them. Carrots will probably start letting out leaves and growing by the end of March, but I’m not sure about beets if they will survive or not.
Still, even if they don’t, leaving roots over the winter will become a great way to have some nice early spring vegetables. Of course, if we don’t start having polar winter temperatures in the future.