Excellent video. I appreciated the stress on watering, watering, and watering. Two shovels is so much neater than my bear hug method! After watching the video I realized it's a miracle my transplanted roses have survived. Because they were frying in the sun, I recently decided to press ahead with the transplant of three full-size rose bushes. The temperature was hovering around 99F. Not the smartest move, but the roses pulled through with minimal damage. They are better off in their new locations.

Update: I finished building the the new hive Saturday morning, then put it in place with the escape cone and started clearing branches around the tree. I actually had to clear a couple just to set the hive up under the trunk. Between cutting branches I kept sealing off more spots where they were escaping aorund the cone. Eventually I realized that was a losing battle, and decided that since I was suited up to work bees anyway, I might as well try to locate the hollow they were in and move them. I took a small bit and a dowel to fit and probed around the trunk to find spots where I knew a hollow was near the surface. When I went to start the neighbors borrowed chainsaw, I realized it was out of gas and that I didn't have any premixed 2-stroke fuel handy either. Tried using a bow saw, but that was no fun. So, I put a crosscut blade in the circular saw and did plunge cuts to carve blocks, then a crowbar to break out chunks. The first hollow had dead wood but no bees, worked on another spot for a while and got nowhere as far as actually removing wood. Found another bulge over what was once an old knot near the entrance hole (the entrance cone was still working to steer hive traffic mainly thorugh it instead of around me) I pried back the square I'd cut and out flew a bee, and I saw a flash of comb behind it. So I topped off the smoker (having already realized that week-dead oak leaves were much better smoker fuel than the smoker fuel that came witht he borrowed smoker) and popped out the inital chunk, then decided to carve out a bit more. At this point I really began to appreciate the smoker. Turns out the comb was aligend edgewide to the direction of hte fall, it had a little new wax on the top edge, and was a little squised looking on the bottom edge, but was in remarkably good shape when I started, and they had a few peices of brand new comb on the new top of the hive. The first couple of peices of comb pretty much had to be torn out to make enough room to work, all honey, mostly old comb. The rest of the comb I had to cut in half to pull out and so it would fit on the bars I was tying it to. I started just using Buck skinning knife, but after the first peice, I got a bread knife to have soem reach to cut the combloose way back in the hollow. Each chunk was between 12-15" long and about 8" in height when tied to the bars. Of the peices, about 3-4 where a mix of uncapped honey and brood, which I put near the main entrance to the new hive, and around 10 were honey. I kept a few chunks of the honeycomb that were too small to tie on after making sure they were free of brood. On the brood comb, I even tied on the little peices. When I headed in for the night, long after dark, I think only one sliver of honey was left back in a hollw I couldn't fish it out of and I'd gotten all of the broodcomb in the main cavity. While I'd been working, many of the bees had clustered in the cone/passage. At one point I was afraid they were jammed so I expanded the opening, but it appears they were just clustering. I think most of the bees were still in the corners of the old hive. There may be another section of hollow yet towards the base of the trunk, and that sliver heading up of honeycomb that I'll need to try to get access to if the hive has not fully moved downstair by Monday. Since thier old home is now wide open and all the food and brood is a walk downstairs, I hope they will find their way down quickly. I didn't see the queen, but I was preoccupied transfering the comb and figured morning light would tell if they had decided to move on down, though by the time I was done, the new hive box had started getting pretty full of bees.

Longportliz, welcome to the Jersey Shore! I hope your move goes well and that you will enjoy your new home. I'm still relatively new to rose culture, but think you'll find your roses will do very well here. The sandy soil usually makes for excellent drainage, you just might have to amend with organic matter. You might want to start by taking a soil sample to your County Agricultural Extension Office for a free pH test, or purchase a kit to send some soil off to the Rutgers Soil Lab for a complete analysis ($15). There are some real rose experts here, though, and I'm hoping they'll post their advice soon. Newbie, I'm in Monmouth County also, and it certainly makes for interesting gardening. Here at home, only a few miles from the beach and across the street from a bay, the weather is considerably milder (winter and summer) than only 20 minutes away in the hills of Middletown (where I work). It's really important to get to know one's microclimate. I believe this being on the cusp is what makes it a difficult call for us. FWIW, I got my instruction from the curator of the rose garden where I bought my roses, a nursery in Zone 6 NY, and for them it's a more cut-and-dried 2-stage process: A rough pruning in early winter to prevent 1) wind-whipping (whereby the root ball gets loosened in the soil by strong winds rocking the plant), and 2) branch breakage from snow load. Then a fine pruning in early spring to shape the plant. Pruning out branches susceptible to snow load seems of particular concern here because of the wet, and hence heavy & sticky, snows we can get here. On the other hand, with our capricious weather, pruning during a mild winter, or before an extended warm spell, might cause the rose to put out new growth too early. Case in point: Almost all of my roses still have a fair number of green leaves and a few have new leaves growing, and I haven't even pruned yet! Longportliz, I'm going to have to check back myself and see how the local experts address your questions. Diane

Hi River, You know, I cannot make that decision for you, but if it were me, I am inclined to say that--based on the forecast for Helena (assuming you still live there)--I'd go ahead and pick everything....and here's why. The NWS is forecasting 34 degrees for the Helena area tonight. If the sky is clear (temps often drop lower than forecast on clear nights and frost forms more easily) and there is no wind (wind can protect plants from frost), then anyone can have frost at 38 degrees, which has happened a lot at my house in recent years. So, knowing frost can form at temps as high as 38 and knowing they are saying 34, I wouldn't take that chance. Also, if you look at the blue area on the county map (bottom of page) on the NWS page linked below, you'll see they are forecasting very cold weather (RECORD LOW TEMPS) for NW OK tonight/tomorrow morning just a couple of counties west of you, and often that forecast will change during the day to include other nearby counties if they see things changing. Having a Freeze Watch that close to you, and a Freeze Warning just west of it is pretty serious for early October. So, I guess my answer is that I'd pick the peppers and tomatoes unless I was absolutely, positively sure I could cover them up well enough to protect them from a freeze and a frost. If you want to leave them alone (and, believe me, I have done this plenty of times....played the odds that I could successfully protect them by covering them), then consider doing the following. As soon as you get home from work and can get out to the garden, fill up buckets or jugs or whatever you have (I usually use 5-gallon buckets or cat litter buckets) with the warmest water you can manage. Set the buckets of warm water as close to your plants as possible and cover all of it with the visqueen. Keep in mind, though, that any part of the plant that touches the visqueen is going to freeze, although most of the plant may survive. So, if you have peppers or tomatoes on the upper or outer edges of the plants, pick those before you put the visqueen over them. You also can use a string of Christmas lights to provide a little heat under the visqueen. I generally pick all my peppers and tomatoes when our forecast says it will go below 40 degrees because in my low-lying area, we almost always go colder than they say....once we went 18 degrees colder....they said 50 and we went to 32 and I lost everything.....so I actually am 'pushing it' when I leave plants in at 40 or higher. Most years, we get a good month of "Indian Summer" after that first cold night, but it only helps us if we can get our plants through that first cold night and I am really concerned about tonight's cold temps. To see the term "Record Cold" on a NWS forecast for this early in October is a very bad sign and I think all we gardeners need to be concerned about tonight's cold. Are you going to dig up any pepper plants and overwinter them inside? If so, this evening is the time to dig! My uncle pulls up his pepper plants and hangs them upside down in an insulated barn and picks good peppers for weeks after. I've done the same with tomatoes and some peppers, using my tornado shelter instead of our barn. You're one zone colder than me though, and two zones colder than my uncle, so even an insulated barn or garage might not stay warm enough at night for the pepper plants. Check out your county's forecast on the link below, and keep an eye on the warning for the counties west of you to see if it gets extended to y'all sometime today. Good luck....I hope you'll let us know what you decide and if it worked. By the way, it is colder here right now at our house near Marietta than they said it would be...and that is making me nervous about my uncovered plants. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: NWS Enchanced Page