Potentially stupid question about raised beds

[Littletreefrog]

We have a garden for the first time in our lives and we want a little veg patch.

I was thinking raised beds just to keep things nice and contained but here comes my stupid question...do they have bottoms?

Some of the raised beds we have seen to buy are not very tall. Which has made me think maybe they don't have a bottom so things like potatoes and carrots end up growing in the actual ground under the bed not just the soil you have put in the raised bed.

The area we want to put them in used to have a shed on it so the ground is very compacted. If they don't have a bottom I will have to give it a good dig over before we put them on.

They don’t have a bottom but you can let the plants do the work. Plant potatoes the first year and they’ll break the earth up a bit.
Other crops will be fine in the stuff on top.

I filled mine with straw and muck from a stable.
If you have enough depth, put twigs and cardboard, grass clippings, compost and topsoil (lasagne bed). It holds moisture and rota down into good stuff.

No they don't have bottoms. They just contain the soil in one area.

Or you can use the square foot gardening method.
fill the beds with a special mix of compost, vermiculite, soil. Think it’s called Mel’s mix. I

You can get deeper raised beds, I don't know how many you are planning. Mine is certainly deep enough for carrots and potatoes, or you can grow potatoes very compactly in separate tubs or containers.

If you fill your beds with a good mixture of organic material all the worms and microorganisms will get busy, so I wouldn't bother to properly dig the compacted soil but it would be worth just breaking up the surface a bit.

There is a book called Veg in One Bed which I found very useful when I started, there's lots of info on YouTube too.