The highest hurdle to get over, and, in retrospect, one of the strengths of a formal literature review was to narrow the source material down enough to fit the given limits. A literature review where you cover only a small part of all available literature can give you a quick yet in-depth understanding of the subject matter - provided you've picked the right source material!
Our little review wasn't anywhere near a real scientific literature review, but I feel better equipped to researching and writing something on a narrower topic and delving deeper (old adage: as you progress in academia, you know more and more about less and less - with the obvious pinnacle...) into a subject more directly related to horticulture. Or possibly even just for my own edification!
The internet is rife with resources for conducting literature reviews. University of Toronto has an excellent handout with tips. The Wikipedia article on literature reviews has a plethora of links for further information on the subject, and I think I may already have fallen in love[1] with this, a website from University of Reading, specifically designed to help science undergrads on getting started with doing scientific research.
...and for anyone who can't be bothered to read long explanations, here's a tweet with all the steps for writing the perfect literature review:
Mihaela (Dr. V)
lit review steps 1: find articles; 2 read them, use them to 3 find more articles; 4 organize all articles; 5 outline; 6 write
[1] It turns out I'm still a scientist at heart, despite my predilection for getting down and dirty with plants and soil...
Image source: http://www.psichi.org/images/site_pages/13_2_lai_1.jpg, tweet source: http://prprofmv.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/literature-review-process-update-1/
I found your post very interesting. Writing a literature review is, by no means, an easy thing to do. However, with this small start, feeling better equipted for the future is all one can ask for in education.
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