Lol, yes U.S. farmers can be highly ignorant of farming. The shit I have seen over the years. To be fair i have run into ignorant farmers all over the world. Most of the time it’s due to available technology and information. However the Midwest and Prairie Provinces are something special, the term “willful ignorance” applies more frequently.

Also Deere in some regions also have a local monopoly with no competition close due the the before mentioned cult following. The farmers in those regions are mostly ignorant of the other equipment manufacturers.

Deere has a cult following with some farmers.

Many farmers are also the definition of ignorant. They live in remote area with limited contact outside of their social group.

FYI Tomato flowers are cleistogamous and are 95%+ self-pollinating. So pollen on tomato flowers doesn’t actually need to be transfered between flowers. The flowers just need to be shaken up a bit to get the pollen to drop from the anther to the pistil.

So take something that vibrates like a electric toothbrush, massager, or other personal devices (wink, wink) and shake the hell out of the flowers.

Depending on the location, they can add 3-4 more months of a growing window. So double cropping or staggered plantings for a longer harvest window becomes viable.

Heat is what everyone thinks of, however that’s only part of the equation.

More importantly they maintain higher air moisture level around the leaves close to the saturation point.

This allows the plants to keep their stomatas open longer. This keeps the photosynthetic pathways operating for more time during the day. More time = more carbohydrate = more production.

They are also usually watered by drip irrigation as well. Providing he right amount of water, not too much or too little, greatly increases a plants yield.

A high tunnel is a unheated/cooled greenhouse/nethouse that is popular in every country not stuck in the dark ages with their agriculture. They come in many sizes. For example 100m x 20m ones popular in the middle east and Australia. In southern Spain they built ones that cover 20ha or more. A few in Poland were my favorite. They used split pine rails to build them.

That looks like a 1940’s WII landscaping plan. If you really want to invest in homesteading, get out of the 1940’s design.

Invest in a high tunnel instead. The larger the better.

It will out-produce the little raised beds by a factor of 3x to 10x depending on the crop.