Ok. I managed to find a tomato seedling this late in the season. She's called 'Early Girl' (someone miss-named her), and she is due to produce 50 days from planting. I did as you suggested Sjoerd, gave her a full body haircut, leaving only a few tuffs at the top. She is planted at angle & I am crossing my fingers. I have a hole next to her that I will insert a watering bottle into. Wish her (me) luck!
Wow Cayuga! Great news. I DO most certainly wish you luck. I hope that you will make posts from time to time to show how your plant is coming along. How exciting is this!
Sjoerd, An update: Early Girl (planted VERY late) is HUGE. She has caught up with the other tomato plants that were planted a month earlier. Her tomatoes are still green, but she's a coming! I will plant all my tomatoes this way next year. I also like the upended 2 liter bottle idea & have been placing them about the garden. Next year, I will bury them with the transplants. There is a woman at the community garden, a very experienced gardener & she loved your bottle idea. She says she will do it next year.
Thanks for the update, CAYU. It is pretty nice that your gardening colleague will use the bottle idea. I suppose that the growing period is over for that experimental plant that you tried my method on. Did it go on to produce well for you? I missed this update of yours somehow. My apologies. I was really interested in the outcome
Hi Sjoerd, yes that plant did produce well. This year I planted all my tomatoes your way as did 2 others in the community garden. You have started a "thing" here in Harvard MA. I call it the "Sjoerd Method". Of course I have no doubt I am totally mispronouncing your name. You probably wouldn't even recognize your name!
Heh, heh, heh....yeah, its a weird name alright. Well, not here of course, but yo your eyes and ears --of course. You pronounce it as follows---sjoe sounds like 'shoe', + the rd. So, it is Shoerd. You just pronounce it all as one syllable. At any rate---glad to hear of your success and the other two that tried this technique. I think that I recall you telling me that a while ago now, come to think of it. It is good to hear that others try something new, and that it works for them. That is just great. Have you decided what sort of toms you will be trying next year?
Thank you!!! I will have to woman-wrestle my tongue to pronounce your name properly. I have been saying it like 'SO' = well, like so, to sow seeds or sew clothes', and then JERD. Which makes totally no sense because there's that 'J' between the 'S' and the 'O'. our ('J' is something like a 'CH' sound).I am afraid I am helplessly American in this way... very poor with foreign languages. I took French in high school, but it is rusty now ; I learned a bit of Spanish trying to communicate with my Cuban Mother in law, also rusty now. I am afraid we Americans are lazy with languages. So your name is ONE syllable !?!. I would not have anticipated that. And the 'SJ' is an 'SH' sound. And the o is like an oo or ew sound in English. Can you tell me if it sounds a little like the English word 'ASSURED', but without the 'A'? Or do you stretch out the 'oo' sound a bit more? Re you other question about the tomatoes, I know I will plant 'Sungold', they are delicious, fool proof, and prodigious. Plus their yellow skins looks so pretty against the red of other tomatoes. I know I will also plant 'Juliette'...also very successful. Other than that I don't know. We had a tough season this summer: drought. Our area is still ranked in Extreme Drought this fall. The other tomatoes did not do as well but it was a tough season. Do you have varieties you particularly like? PS: next season I will be recommending the 'SHOOERD' Method when anyone asks what I am doing with my tortured bottled tomatoes! I am sure I will get a 'What?'
What a chuckle. Ach Cayu...you are so good. Your transliteration of my name is better than what I tried to show. The way that you spelled it in your P.S. is just perfect. The 'oo' sound is not dragged out. The 'r' has a little roll to it. But that's all technical-talk...I'll bet when you pronounce it now it'll sound just fine.I will tell you why the 'sj' sounds like a 'sh' in English. The 'j' has a sound like a 'y' in english in the word, yoo-hoo. When an 's' is placed before you get a s-yuh (sh) sound and spoken rapidly, it sounds like the 'sh' sound in English. I know, I know--this is waaaay more info than you needed. hahaha. It does sound almost exactly like "assured", minus the 'a'. The toms that I have the best luck with are the Ferline, the Pozzano and a new one that I want to try this coming season is, the Crimson Crush. You get top marks for your pronunciation work. Chapeau.
Chuckle is right. I hope others see this stream & get a chuckle out of it too! Your description of the ?Dutch? Frisian? 'J' makes sense. When our son was born, we named him Jason (Jake for short). My Cuban mother-in-law's English was not so good & we didn't want her calling him ''Yake or Yason" ( pronounced like the 'y' in yoohoo or the ?Dutch 'J' ), so we told her to think the 'J' as a CH sound. (There is a CH sound in Spanish.) It worked! She was the only one of our Cuban relatives who could pronounce his name correctly.
That was a good story. It is true that some spanish-speaking folks have difficulty with pronouncing certain English sounds correctly. You guys came up with a good solution didn't you.
