July 6, 2013: Chicago Rooftop First Ripe Tomatoes

After the rainiest spring on record and with some wild temperature swings, we had enough sun and heat to set up and ripen our favorite early tomato varieties. 

Matina

 

We planted out these seedlings on a warm May 6 day, several weeks before tomatoes have historically been safe from frost to plant in Chicago. And then, bizarrely, on May 20 it was 90 degrees F. People, this is not Chicago weather.

Stupice

We've found these relatively smaller, earlier varieties most able to withstand weather extremes. Larger tomatoes don't do as well on our roof these days.

Glacier

 

Black Prince

These ripening fruits need a blast of heat to boost flavor, and it looks like they'll get in over the next couple weeks.

First Rooftop Tomatoes Emerge: Stupice

 May 31, 2013

If you're a regular reader you know the tomato Stupice is not only a reliable early fruiter in Chicago, but also a trouper that's hung in (quite literally) and produced well through one of our worst tomato summers. Remarkably, it performed just as nicely in 2009, one of the coolest and dampest summers in recent memory.

As always, thanks to Russ, one of our original GRGers, who gave us the seeds for this early and weather-flexible tomat. I wouldn't be without it. Bruce and we started these from seed and I planted on the roof May 7, 2013, in a 5-gal SIP.

Here's the background on Stupice from Seed Savers: 

(Solanum lycopersicum) One of four tomato varieties sent to the U.S. from the former Czechoslovakia by Milan Sodomka. Compact plants with potato leaf foliage loaded with clusters of 2” fruits. Quite early, great flavor. Heavy yields all season. Produces well in northern climates. Indeterminate, 55-70 days from transplant.

Stupice growing on our roof in 2012, the hottest overall summer on record in Chi.

First Tomato 2012

Call it June 23. I didn't pick it right away. Stupice, of course, a favorite of ours.

55 days. Lycopersicon esculentum. Plant produces high yields of 2 ½" diameter red tomatoes. This early producing variety was does well in Northern regions. The potato leaf plant produces tomatoes in clusters all season long. It has excellent tomato flavor. A variety from Czechoslovakia. Indeterminate.