If you choose a fruit tree with high chill hours (such as one that would do well in Dallas with nearly 1000 chill hours) but you live in Austin and may only get 400 to 600 chill hours, you may end up with no fruit at all. Be sure to heed suggestions as to how much sun a plant can handle and how much water it will need, and you'll be well on your way to a stunning, climate-friendly garden. If you are in an area where there are more cold hours and you plant a plant destined for low temperatures, fruiting will be premature and you will lose the fruits with the next frost. I had a hard time finding a decent cold hour map, so I'll cheat and tell them that those in Austin have between 400 and 600 cold hours, if they're farther north of Austin they're 600 to 800 and farther south, it's between 200 and 400, which is where their citrus fruits will grow best. Urban Farmer offers a wide selection of vegetable seeds to gardeners and farmers across the United States.
What that means for the Austin gardener is that it's really hot and it seems to get hotter every year. Once you have a better idea of the type of climate you live in, you can make better decisions about the type of garden you want to grow and the amount of work ahead of you.
