Or maybe he was the exception and not the rule, and by a lucky connection of Venus with Saturn had the "right" patch of land, with the "right" soil and the "right" set of "injected tree sprouts" or whatever.

I don't doubt that it can work, what I am telling you is that AFAIK it is not a "surely working" approach, if you have some land and some spare thousands Euro to invest in an experiment, it is fine, if you think that those thousands Euro will surely grow to a few tens in fifteen years, you are most probably wrong.