I had searched and searched back in January on the internet for chilling information for my area in Dallas, and could not find anything useful. I was really surprised. The only thing mildly useful was this site that just gives you your zone down to the county but not verified chilling histories. http://www.plantmaps.com/interactive-texas-usda-plant-zone-hardiness-map.php. It also gives first and last frost dates. Here is a link that might be useful: dallasfruitgrower

I thought I would mention one of the unusual ones here, just because I noticed that some you are in Southern California. (Disclaimer: If you're located in a different part of the country where disease is a big problem, you can stop reading now, you'll be wasting your time because this variety isn't going to grow where you live) I read that Comice is supposedly more adaptable to lower-chill conditions than many other European pear varieties (though this is debatable, Gary Matsuoka of Laguna Hills Nursery stated he had only ever seen 1 crop in 25 years). Assuming this is true, it would not be surprising. After lots of research done in another thread ( Any Pear or Apple varieties with an aroma like Quince? ) I have come to the suspicion that some European pear varieties may in fact have a quince ancestor. If you know anything about quince (Cydonia Oblonga), it is hard yellow fruit related to pear and apple, with a wonderful very fragrant aroma, but usually too hard, dense, and astringent to eat raw, so they are usually used in cooking. Quince is generally considered a lower-chill fruit than pear or apple, and was traditionally grown around the Mediterranean. Anyway, I believe it is the quince ancestor that gives some of these French pears their exquisite flavor, but these same pear varieties also tend to be a little bit hard, firm, and dense (perhaps a little like the fruit of a quince). The French pear passé crassane, in fact, is actually claimed to have resulted from a cross between quince and pear (1885 by nurseryman Louis Boisbunel in the Rouen region). This hybridization has made this pear parthenocarpic, meaning it can produce fruit that does not contain seeds, without being pollinized. Being a direct hybrid between pear and quince, you can imagine that the pear is quite hard. It needs two months to ripen off the tree, but even then the texture is quite firm. But it does have unsurpassed flavor, appreciated by pear connoisseurs and aficionados. It is sometimes appreciated by expert chefs as well, and with just a slight amount of cooking it makes for superb dessert dishes. While passé crassane is generally a rather obscure and hard to find pear variety in America, brief mention of it did appear in a 1992 L.A. Times article about pears growing in orchards of Julian, CA, (alternatively spelled Passe-Crassane), so I would imagine there are at least a few people growing it there. "Besides Julian's Apples, There Are the Pears" The Arboreum Company nursery, located in Santa Clara County, also sells Passe Crassane, but they may not always have it in stock available to sell. Passé crassane is extremely susceptible to fire blight, perhaps more so than any other pear, so I don't want to get anyone's hopes up who may live in a different part of the country. This will not be a problem in the dry climate of Southern California and the rest of the Southwest though. The French used to export a huge amount of these pears to England and Germany, but because of fire blight issues the country later banned new plantings of this once-iconic variety. There are a small number of commercial plantings still being operated in Northern Italy, where they thrive in that climate. (and coastal Southern California has a Mediterranean-type climate, I will point out) To summarize what I'm saying, those quince genes may make certain European pear varieties like passé crassane and Comice more suitable to grow in warmer dry climates, so they may be worth a try where you live, for anyone willing to experiment.

bsewall- Great comparison! yes...these two areas are wildly different when it come to freezes. The Tampa data comes from the airport, which is located north of Tampa Bay. So, when the cold fronts roll down from the north, the bay cant help anywhere near as much as it does for the St. Pete station, which as I mentioned above, is located literally in Tampa Bay on the south east part of Pinellas. Here are a few more plots to further illustrate your point. They come from the Southeast Climate center as show the probability of going 365 days in a row without the temperature dropping below a certain value. As can be seen in these charts, there is an 80% chance of going 365 without the temp dropping below 36F at the St. Pete station, but only a 30% chance of that happening at the Tampa AP. What I really like about these charts is that they are based on really long term data (since 1900 for Tampa and 1948 for St. Pete).

Thank you for the link you provided, it's extremely useful. I also appreciate you taking time to post to my thread. I have a few other questions. It says to enter the 'start date' for when the chill hours start and the'end date' for when the chill hours end. I am new to Brooksville Florida, so I have no idea what the dates are for when the chill hours start and end here. It doesn't have to be exact, just an idea of what months the chill hours start in, and what month the chill hours end in for the Brooksville FL would suffice. Could you please help me with this? Also there are a ton of different low chill peach trees.....some have a range of 200-250 others have a range of like 250-350....so I have no idea what types of low chill trees would grow best here....what range would be the most suitable for them with chill hours and some are have very low chill requirements, like 100-150 chill hours. So I am not sure whether to pick the higher range (250-350 or 200-250) or the lower range (100-150)