[noshed]

Here are my beds - about 4' wide, not that raised and no wood. I still try not to walk on them and I just keep piling the compost on.

[peapod]

Thats a really good pic Noshed
Ive been looking at doing this because I dont want to lay out possible money on wood. This is perfect and neat..exactly what I want. Does it help with any drainage problems do you think?

Paula

[woodburner]

Lazy beds are what you want. I'm always on about them. Bob Flowerdew also advocates them They are just the same as no dig beds only you dig the path out and chuck it on the bed too; gives a bit more height which helps with drainage.

[noshed]

I kind of half did that when I started, then the paths got weedy and I've either covered them with black weed suppressant or left them weedy - as in the picture. I have glyphosated them now and I'll scrape them over a bit in the winter and put more weed suppressant on.
All I've done recently is chopped the edges off with a spade and a garden line to make them straightish and piled the clods onto the beds, pulling out the big weeds as I go.
I think not walking on the soil does help - although you have to firm the brassicas in well. We've just had 15 tons of council compost delivered to our site, some of which I've spread thinly over my empty beds so we'll see how much of a difference that makes.
The scruffy leek bed in the background I inherited, so I've just continued piling compost in there. I noticed over the summer that once I'd cleared out my blighty tomato plants, the soil was loose and got washed out a bit in the heavy rain.

Here's another view:

[Oscar Too]

I did that last year but I found a few problems:

The path acts as a reservoir for weeds so you need to weed that too;

the paths also allow slugs and snails to get closer to the crop;

and the bed gets narrower as it gets higher, so you lose planting space on the top.  4 feet wide at the base is not 4 feet wide at the top, but I still had to get all my peas and so on in, and I ended up overcrowding some;

and as you weed with a hoe, you kind of drag material back down again.

This year, I've made a few wooden beds for strawbs, and will make a few more.  The rest of the lotty will not be bedded but just be in rows on one level.  I've dug the whole thing over, including old paths, and I shall just put boards down on the soil when I need to access it for weeding.  A neighbour does this very successfully and has a very productive and clean plot.