What do you trust more: process or results?

I spent the summer babying the best-looking cucumber vines I've ever grown, and they gave me exactly three fruit before curling up and dying. Quiet labor doesn't always pay. Meanwhile the neighbor who talks a big game about his tomatoes is drowning in them. I keep reading about people who promise their method works, and I can't tell if I'm just bitter or if I've actually learned something. How do you decide who to believe when the evidence is that the noisy ones win?