How much raised bed space do you plan to grow on?

There are also many mixes of soil that people grow with, and they all like their mix if it does well for them.

Your option 1 is fine if you don't need large quantities of it (large will depend on how you feel about the cost). Be sure to get the one labelled as "potting mix" and not "garden mix" (substitute mix and soil as needed for the different brands).

Option 2 is also good but the top soil quality seems to vary from region to region and even brand. However, your amendments that you listed should be fine depending on what kind of soil you wanted.

You can substitute perlite for vermiculite. Either one of those are usually recommended.

It is far better to learn your native soil type and amend accordingly as required. Much cheaper and plants grow better in the long run.

While it may very well be easier/more advisable to grow in native soil, it is not always practical to fill raised beds with native soils. Who has 2-3 cubic yards of extra soil sitting around? Importing soil is really the only alternative!

Obviously, bulk soils will have the economic advantage over bagged soils. But if you have to go with bagged ingredients, you do not need to get fancy. Just topsoil and compost is all that's required - raised beds do not require drainage enhancers like perlite (vermiculite impedes drainage, not enhances, so nix on that!) - raised beds by definition will have good drainage. Peat is also unnecessary and may alter soil mix pH unfavorably. And these sorts of pricey amendments add unnecessary expense to an outdoor planting mix.

Bagged "topsoil" - whatever that may be - and compost/composted manures is all that is necessary to formulate a perfectly adequate planting soil mix for raised beds. A little coarse sand thrown in won't hurt either. That is very close to what you will find with bulk soil providers as an all purpose planting mix. I would go with a 60-30-10 ratio: 60% topsoil, 30% compost or composted manure and 10% coarse sand.

Potting soil, soilless mixes, is not what is needed for a raised planting bed. They are for use in small containers.
A good soil mix for any garden, raised of level, would be composed of about 45 percent sand, 25 percent silt, 25 percent clay and about 5 percent organic matter. That soil mix can be difficult to find unless you have a nursery that mixes that soil. Look around and you might find a soil mix that is 92 to 95 percent mineral and 5 to 8 percent organic matter and that is what you want. Once you have that you amend it, as necessary, with organic matter which is compost, animal manures, and vegetative waste.

So don't do raised beds. Little advantage to them unless in pure clay and/or very far north. Mostly they are a needless expense and effort.

Unfortunately, I am 2 for 2. detroit michigan, clay soil.

I am fighting with myself on how many beds to do. I planted a bunch of seeds, and now I have 8 each of watermelon, cucumber, and peppers, as well as 16 tomato seedlings....

I fear thats more veggies than I can eat, and the cost of the raised beds is making me feel guilty, plus the disruption to the yard that may be a turnoff for resale.

Im thinking of picking the 2 best seedlings of each variety, and doing 1 or 2 raised beds. instead of what would have been 5 or 6 beds. Id still like to find room for some corn and strawberries.

I may stick the remaining seeds in the back of the yard straight into the raw dirt and let the chips fall where they may on them. maybe they live, maybe they die, no loss to me either way.

Raised beds are the rage these days. I raised my gardens for 40 years without them and had good gardens in my clay loam soil. When I retired and had the time for my hobby to move to another level, I started amending the soil and opened up another garden too.

My main concern was to have deeper soil that worked up early and easily. I succeeded beyond expectations by mixing in amendments into 8 inches of the existing good soil. This gives me a foot or so of topsoil. I add organic material yearly. I use no lumber or blocks and make wider beds than the cookie cutter 'authorized' ones...love them.

bauerbach, I kind of understand your thinking. For me, the garden and its production is the main thing. I grew up on the farm and live in the real country. I have 3 fair sized gardens.

I have a sister whose husband was a mechanical engineer. Now anything they would lay out would be perfectly straight and 'engineered' so so with the
trimmings, see?

In the Detroit area are many urban farms, some with raised beds and some at ground level growing plants in that clay soil that has been amended with organic matter. The drainage issues that clay soils often present can be fairly easily resolved with raised beds but those raised beds can be quite expensive to establish unless one finds a source of grants to help with the expense.
While a raised bed can be ready to plant a couple of weeks after being built, and it can take 3 to 5 years of work on clay soils to get there, the Soil Food Web will not be very active for 3 to 5 years in that raised bed.

You could always make two beds, one raised and one in the native soil with some compost added, and see how they do.

I have clay, and my approach has always been to amend my soil to a good state rather than make a bed x inches high. In the process, over the years, the levels have risen about 4-6". I did not start out making a 4-6" bed and trying to fill it with something, but it happened over time as the native soil was amended.