First of all, you don't want to expose your bare bulbs to freezer temperatures. They are much too cold for bare plant tissue. Secondly, an overnight chilling period isn't enough.

Just as most of us in the southern or warmer parts of the country can't grow regular crocus or tulips predictably, it follows that this crocus won't do well.

I'm curious. How many of these bulbs does one have to grow in order to be able to use them for culinary purposes?

Thank you. Should have thought the refrigerator, then. Although I surely don't have room in any refrigerator either for large pots of growing saffron, since the fool things grow in the winter when they would need the chilling? To recap, you have reason to think the chilling period would have to be a long, continuous period. It couldn't be a month or two of overnight chilling followed by warmer days.

Guess how many saffron corms you need depends on how much you use saffron. If I remember correctly, there are three saffron 'threads' per flower.

http://www.saffronbulbs.com/culture.htm

About 150 flowers are needed to make one gram of dried saffron.

The first year of plantation around 60% of corms will produce one flower each.

The next two years, corms will give about 2 flowers each.

http://www.finecooking.com/article/getting-the-most-from-a-pinch-of-saffron

says a pinch of saffron is about twenty threads, so eight flowers to make a pinch of saffron at best. Recipes I have seen call for one or two pinches of saffron. 150 threads of saffron (one gram) would make about 4 recipes worth of saffron, I guess, if all the saffron corms flowered. If only about 60% of corms flower, then for safety about five corms out of ten would flower? Roughly you would need 14 corms to get 7 corms of one flower each for 20 threads of saffron, 28 corms for 14 corms of flowers or two pinches of saffron. 28 corms for one recipe's worth of saffron.

I started with 10 corms per 10 gallon pot. Because of the shape of the pots, this may have been a little cramped sideways and deeper than the saffron needed. The plants seemed to grow quite happily, but they never flowered, and they multiplied into many little corms. Kind of doubt the corms would get bigger if I left them to grow in the pots for another year or two, especially based on what you said about chilling hours, but that might be wrong.

A fun, if frustrating, experiment.

Nope....overnight chilling won't work.

Bulbs do very well in shallow, wide pots like this.