North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Charles Paradise <machelp@attglobal.net>]

Ron Cadillac of Massachusetts wrote the best article I've seen on degree 
days.  I think it was in the 1983 edition of the Annual Report of The 
Northern Nut Growers Association [NNGA].  If you want to know exactly I can 
look it up for you.

Ron did some extrapolations of which pecans would grow at which locations by 
comparing the degree days.
Charlie Paradise

Mark Lee wrote:

> 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