Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - [NAFEX] growing degree days

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Mark Lee" <markl@nytec.com>
  • To: "'North American Fruit Explorers'" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] growing degree days
  • Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 16:58:13 -0700

This year we had a warm spring and summer. Everything ripened earlier
than usual. This is a pretty basic question... can the ripening of
fruit be predicted by cumulative "growing degree days"? Let me know if
I'm correct on this. Here are few ways I would use this information:
1. If I keep track of my own fruit ripening times each year in growing
degree days (data available at a number of websites), then I should be
able to predict how late or early a crop will be in years when the
weather is unusually cold or hot.
2. If I wanted to predict how an uncommon plant, like pawpaw, would do
in my own backyard, I would need to find out the growing degree days
required to fully ripen the fruit. Is that a good assumption?
3. If I have a microclimate, like a courtyard, that is much warmer than
the rest of my yard, I would be able to predict what fruits would ripen
there that would not ripen in the rest of my yard.
Would I be able to use the growing degree days model in these ways?

In Seattle this year, we had 2050 growing degree days (50-86F). That
was hot for us, but pretty wimpy compared to the rest of the country.
-Mark Lee, Seattle





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page