Is it hours of light, temp, combo, or a particular date on the calendar? when do you give up? do you use any protection? and what zone if it's not on your 'handle' :) If you do strict calendar, you'll be sorry more often than not. We will likely have frost tonight, I have several strategies to cover tender crops, and after that we'll have temps in the 70s F again, and I'll get at least two more weeks of production, maybe covering 1-2 more times the toms, peps, eggplant, squash, etc. Peas, lettuce, cabbage, spinach have another month. Very, very easy to extend the season. Takes a little money and some thought. Dan

Keep in mind that cukes and peppers often self sow in the garden, which means their seeds were abandoned and left to their own devices all winter. They still sprouted, which means in theory you can put them out any time. The beauty of WS is that if you incur a late season freeze, after your seeds have sprouted, you can move the containers indoors. I started cukes, squash and pumpkins last year in gallon milk jugs. I planted only four seeds to a jug to minimize the tangling of fast growing roots. On the few occasions I use paper tubes, I fill in the gaps in between with soil and put a 1/2" cover over all of them as well. Otherwise, the cardboard provides a very large surface area for evaporation and I fight moisture loss.

"I am about to try this with some beans grown early in a greenhouse which have now stopped producing. I am doubtful it will work as unlike leafy plants which will respond to cutting by growing more, beans grow in order to produce seed to reproduce the plant. Having taken 6 kg of beans away (all quite young) I imagine the plants are fairly exhausted and may not have the resources to produce all the extra needed vegetative growth and then more pods (forming seed is a very energy demanding process)." Under those conditions, it might be helpful to lightly fertilize. Use a water-based fertilizer, once only. This goes against conventional wisdom, since this forum is full of "lots of leaves, but no beans" posts caused by excessive N...but this should shock the plants back to their vegetative growth cycle. The plants may not be as exhausted as you think, if you always harvested before they formed seed.

At my last house I had raised beds - 4' wide by 12-20' long with wooden sides about 1 1/2 foot tall. Over two or three years we built 8 of these large beds plus several smaller beds for perennial crops like stawberries, rhubarb, and horseradish. For that situation, there were several advantages. It allowed us to have flat areas on a hill; we terraced with rock walls and put the beds on those flat areas, surrounded by woodchips for mulch, so there was no weeding at all. The beds were sunk about a foot below the grade, and we had to sift the soil, which was shallow over fractured ledge, to get rid of all the rock, and then we filled the rest of the beds with composted cow manure, thanks to our local dairy farmer. So, we ended up with no weeds & great soil in flat beds from an area that started out mostly rock on a steep grade. Other pluses were sitting on the bed sides to plant, screwing trellises for beans, melons, cukes, etc. directly into the bed sides, and the ablility to plant early due to good drainage and early season warm-up. We also sometimes put plastic hoops over the beds, tucking the hoop ends inside the beds to hold them, to cover with spun-bond or plastic. On our strawberry beds, we put hinged wire mesh covers so the chipmunks couldn't eat the berries. Between mulch and the high organic content of the soil, we only had to water when it had been dry for a couple of weeks or more. Our current house had a pre-existing ground-level garden which we simply took over as was since the house needed a huge amount of work, so that's where our efforts and energy went. I miss the raised beds, and find that I have more difficulty with soil-living bugs like wire worms in my potatoes and cutworms crawling in from the surrounding field. I can't work in the garden as long since I have to bend more or sit on & scoot along the ground. (I'm no spring chicken!) The grass and weeds migrate into the veggie garden from the surrounding field, and the soil needs to be prepped in the fall so I can plant peas, potatoes, etc. earlier in spring since the soil stays cold and wet for much longer. There are two only advantages I can see to the ground level garden: it's easier to till with a machine like a big tiller or tractor if you want to be able to do that, and any crops that need winter warmth can be well mulched and will stay warmer in the ground. Garlic, which is a bit borderline as far as hardiness here, has better survival rates, and my leeks and root vegetables overwinter better with a thick layer of mulch when they are in the ground rather than in a raised bed. So, like Lisa, I will eventually have some of both, but with most of my garden as raised beds and a smaller part of it in the ground.