Well, to me the answer is obvious. Of course. But what kind should I put in. As my gardening life progresses I am always finding new ways to garden and new kinds of beds. Raised beds, trenched beds, double-dug beds, or the "traditional" beds- which I will call flat beds. How is one to decide?
Following is a brief description of each bed and how to put it in....
Let's start with the bed type that many people are becoming familiar with- the Raised Bed. In its simplest form a raised bed is what it sounds like.... a patch of land which is raised up from the surrounding area. This can mean that it is raised up on stilts, built up with pavers, or just mounded to about 2 or more feet above the surrounding soil with no supports. Its benefits include- good drainage for the soil, soil that warms up faster than the surrounding beds, and they can be built up on stilts for anyone who has trouble kneeling or who is confined to a wheelchair. They are especially good for warm weather crops that like hot soil - like melons, but just about any planting will appreciate the conditions a raised bed provides.
Second, there is a trenched bed. This type is not as widely known. This type, again, is what it sounds like, pretty much the inverse of the raised bed. You dig a trench, about a foot or so deep, and plant your vegetables in the trench. Then you cover the plantings up to half-way up the trench. In doing so you till the soil to a good depth so that nutirents can more easily reach the roots, and root vegetables develop more readily. Trenched beds are usually used for root crops that like well tilled soil, or crops that need to be blanched (or kept white) like celery, leeks, and onions. Potatoes are planted in trenched rows so that as the plant grows more soil can be put on top to encourage a larger yield.
The third, and probably least well known of the types of beds is the double dug bed. This type of bed takes the most amount of work, but can yield very good results. For a double-dug bed you are pretty much tilling the soil to twice the depth that you would normally and inverting the layers of soil as you do. To do this you mark off a patch of your bed and dig abou 6" down, putting the dirt to one side, and then dig another 6" down putting that dirt into another pile. After this has been done, you dig a trench the same size next to it, filling the first trench with dirt from the second one, and filling the second trench, first with the top 6" of soil from the first trench, and then topping it off with the second 6" of soil from the first trench. This yields a well tilled bed twice as deep as normally, providing much needed nutrients from the deeper layers of the soil, to the plants in the top half. Like the raised beds, pretty much any vegetable will benefit from this soil treatment. And like trenched beds, root vegetables work especially well in these beds, as they can develop fully in the loose rich soil of the deeply tilled beds. These also drain better than flat beds, and can be amended as you dig them.
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