📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Gigant Chernomorskiy (Black Sea Giant)
- 🌍 Origin: A fantastic commercial/heirloom variety from Russia/Ukraine. The name translates directly to “Black Sea Giant”.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall), usually growing to about 5.5 to 6 ft (1.7 – 1.8 m) in a greenhouse. It is vigorous enough to be pruned to 2 or 3 main stems while still producing massive fruit.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Huge, dark-pink to raspberry colored beefsteaks. They are very dense and meaty, frequently weighing anywhere from 10.5 oz up to a massive 1.5 lbs (300-700 g).
- 👅 Flavor: Highly rated for its complex, balanced old-school flavor. Growers note it has a great mix of sweetness and acidity, and is never bland.
- ⏳ Maturity: Mid-season. A very reliable producer of large fruits by mid-summer if started early enough indoors.
Gigant Chernomorskiy – mid-season variety, grew in the greenhouse, height 5.5 ft (1.7 m), fruit weight from 10.5 oz to 1.5 lbs (300 to 700 g). The color is dark pink, meaty, delicious.
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2016 Season. Chernomorskiy Gigant, grew to three stems, about 6 ft (1.8 m) tall, mid-season. Around July 10 the second truss was ripe (I planted it out around April 20, sowed seeds on February 10).
Very beautiful fruit color, dark pink. The taste is very good, there is both sweetness and acidity, not bland at all.
Nadezhda provides a fantastic seed-starting timeline here that explains how Northern and Eastern European growers manage to get massive 1.5 lb mid-season beefsteaks fully ripe by early July!
Notice her dates: She sowed the seeds indoors on February 10, but didn’t plant them out into the greenhouse until April 20. That means she grew her seedlings indoors under lights for 10 full weeks before transplanting! In the US, the standard advice is to start seeds 6 to 8 weeks before transplanting. But if you want to push your harvest earlier for giant varieties like Gigant Chernomorskiy, potting them up into larger 1-gallon pots indoors and growing them out for 10 weeks gives them a massive head start once they hit the dirt!
