Liquid Refreshment

I have always been a firm believer in taking a bold approach to gardening, sort of a horticultural equivalent to what the military calls reconnaissance-by-fire: just get out there, blast away, and see what happens. This is generally both instructive and fun. Occasionally it produces astonishing successes, such as the four diminutive but irrefutable artichokes I managed to eke out of my sultry Virginia garden last summer.

Gardening is as much art and craft as it is science, and there is so much that has to be adapted through individual experience to individual climate, soil, tools, temperament, and tolerance for tedium that studying handbooks and following expert advice can take a person only so far in any case. The failures that come from just getting out there and trying something are no worse than any other failures one faces when confronting the notoriously fickle gods of agriculture. That is what ...