Fall clean up can happen in the spring but spring clean up can not happen in the fall. To do either in the winter simply flattens into one but not the other.
To be clear, to define these tasks. Fall clean up is the work done after the first freeze to prepare the garden for overwintering. There is a theoretical perfect time of year to do this that does the most good for the garden’s human interests and the least harm to the overwintering insect population. But essentially any garden work is going to have layers of insect death. The question is is it enough to hurt a species or ultimately help encourage scavengers, instead.
Example: if I kill a spider does its death help produce food for scavengers, which in turn add to the soil health, adding to plant health, adding to the net gain of healthy biomass for the garden, or does killing the spider prevent a necessary spider from fulfilling its niche of keeping harmful insects in check? In other words, does killing a spider mean another spider takes its place or is there a vacuum left in the ecosystem?
And at what point are we just being hubristic with all this killing spiders talk?