The winter fallow period is an ecological management window that has long been overlooked in crop rotation systems. Belowground pests are diverse, difficult to monitor and control, and the damage they inflict on crops is generally concealed. The establishment of belowground pest populations is closely associated with soil conditions, ground-dwelling predators and seasonal crop transitions. In recent years, the role of functional plants in soil fertility improvement, biodiversity maintenance and the conservation of the natural enemies of plant pests, has received increased recognition, however, the mechanisms through which these plants exert ecological control on belowground pests remains poorly understood. This review summarizes how functional plant growth, cover and residue incorporation, affect natural enemy abundance, root-soil interactions, microbial communities, metabolite composition and belowground pest population dynamics, and proposes a dual-pathway framework comprised of a natural enemy maintenance pathway and a soil restructuring pathway. In this framework, winter fallow functional plants may maintain ground-dwelling predators by improving near-ground microhabitats and providing overwintering shelters, while root-soil interactions during plant growth and residue inputs after spring incorporation jointly restructure soil physicochemical, microbial and metabolic environments, thereby influencing pest behaviour, development and survival. Using the Cnidium monnieri-peanut (Arachis hypogaea)-white grub system as an example, we discuss the potential of winter fallow functional plants to improve soil health, natural enemy conservation and the ecological control of belowground pests. Overall, winter fallow functional plants have promising potential for belowground pest management, but this framework still needs to be further improved through long-term cross-seasonal field experiments, multi-omics analyses and causal validation.