Removing all annual plants, vines and fallen fruit before adding any mulch, compost or planting a cover crop on your garden is always good gardening. Your vegetable garden should be stripped of all annual plants. Only perennials such as rhubarb should remain along with the garlic you planted last month to be harvested in June. You will be getting rid of disease and possibly insects before you begin gardening next spring.
If the perennials and annuals in your garden were not affected by disease, consider leaving seed heads of black-eyed susans, cone flower and similar plants standing. They provide an important food source for the birds that winter over here. Cleanup can be finished in the spring, and you get to enjoy the birds throughout the winter.
If you come across bittersweet, look at it carefully. The oriental bittersweet (which is what we usually see) is a highly invasive intruder and should be cut down, bagged and sent to the incinerator. It covers and kills trees in the forest and around the edges of fields. It is illegal to sell items made of oriental bittersweet. The decorative wreath on your front door will be eaten by birds and then many bittersweet plants will invade your garden and your neighborhood for years to come. The difference between the nasty oriental and the friendly native bittersweet is remembering that on the native plant, the red berries hang in clumps while they are spaced along the vine on the oriental species.
