The garden reveals plant lore continually. I have been schooled by tomatoes (and many other plants), for several Idaho summers. Prepare beds well. Use supports, twine and tomato clips, for anything resting on the soil will be consumed by others. Corrugated cardboard also works to isolate tomatoes from the ground if it stays dry. And on and on every season.
My grandmother had these problems figured out in some different but equivalent manner. When we mostly ate from kitchen gardens many people knew how to grow their food. Mostly they did not record that knowledge. One learned as a child by doing chores, practiced as youth with your own plots. Growing stuff was common knowledge, therefore without much market value. Farmers know as much as anyone. As much about the land, the crops, the animals. Where land is free, requiring only an army to drive off it's inhabitants, farms multiply, production increases until the market collapses. Forget the railroads, electrification and the rest. Common farming knowledge has no value without land. City folks or more successful farmers are quite happy to buy that land, for very little if the farmer has had a few bad years. Skip forward a few generations. Can kids grow anything today?
So, an old man, I garden. I learn. Someday this knowledge might come in handy. But that is the rationalization. I grow stuff because that is what people have done for 5000 years.
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