I used to have a big in-ground garden. But I switched into raised beds. Using the Square Foot Gardening method in the raised beds, I get more productivity in less space as compared to the in-ground gardening I did years ago.
We all have to figure out what works best for where we live. I live on a lake and my ground soil was mostly sand, and nothing grew very well. So, I built raised beds and filled them with good quality soil and chicken run compost. I never went back to in-ground gardening since then. If I had good ground soil, I might never have tried raised beds.
In any case, it's pretty easy to line the bottom of a raised bed with hardware cloth to keep out moles and such from burrowing into the raised bed.
