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About a decade ago, I was given a gardening book printed in the 70s. I assumed it would be outdated, with less effective, dated advice. I was wrong! I don't know where the book is now, and don't remember the author's name. But that guy had some really good ideas. One of which involved planting certain types of beans, after harvesting an earlier crop from that same garden spot, in the same season. Then you just let the bean plants sprawl along the ground.
You pick beans whenever ripe, and later rototill the bean plants directly into the soil, due to the fact that they are legumes which literally pull nitrogen from the air, and turn it into fertilizer. That way you are adding fiber, organic matter and nitrogen back into that soil. Next year you rinse and repeat, but maybe with a different early crop.
I run 3 currently over flowing compost bins so I just add in there and then eventually back into the garden somewhere. I have another pile on the ground where I add in sticks, limbs, etc along with the green stuff. If I pull up a lot of dirt with weeds from the raised beds, I toss them in a spot I am reclaiming after a hurricane washed out a gully on part of my property line. Been back filing with concrete, bricks, etc, then crap soil on top and then things like weeds with dirt to get something on top to help stabilize the soil in rains.
I have a book about gardening techniques in colonial times which is pretty interesting, though I an not desperate enough to buy a thousand outrageously expensive glass cloches to put over lettuce.