For a long time I couldn’t decide what was better between raised beds (ie: wooden sides) and rows (ie: long market garden style rows on the ground).
Raised beds drain better, have more organic matter, are easier to harvest and areeasier to weed.
Rows allow for you to grow a lot more food in less space.
I garden on a slope, so for me, compost that I add regularly to rows seems to disappear very quickly. I am now in the process of changing over my main garden area into raised beds.
More than that, my mission is to grow the most nutritious food I can and in my experience, the compost in the raised bed is always full of more earthworms and richer in every way.
I have come to the conclusion that a combination of both is best if you have the space
Rows are great for crops that don’t need a huge amount of food and you want to grow a lot of them… think potatoes, garlic and pumpkins.
Everything else I prefer to do in raised beds.
Another point is that with raised beds, you can have grass around the beds which is easy to mow and maintain. With rows, the grass very quickly invades the growing area and thus wood chips are most appropriate for the pathways (but they are more work than the grass).
