Picture posting is enabled for all :)
Bags strikes me as something which could easily fail in a hot summer, due to the amount of watering that would be needed.
My raised beds warm up and dry out much quicker than the lower 'normal' beds, which means I could plant today when others on my site were waterlogged. I did do more prep last year though, all the beds were heavily munched with cow manure late autumn last year, they were beautifully friable and full of worms this morning when I planted all of my potatoes...
Teegee, what you say makes sense. Unfortunately we get extreme water runoff as being right at bottom of hill is a real issue.We get a stream after sustained rain then in hot weather the opposite, as under topsoil we are on gravel. We are gradually improving the soil but even shallow raised beds made a real difference. We are also going higher as one of family now got physical limits where digging isn't possible. So raised beds more accessible.One day we will have all the would structure nice and crumbly :) you are on the mark about cost as filling the beds takes a lot of soil...we are composting with a vengeance.The pots were fun and we tried a tower.but we seemed to proportionally do just as well with pots.