Jessica, since you do have good ventilation in the greenhouse then go ahead and use it. The plastic walls will certainly help with protecting the canes from the drying winds. Do get a thermometer to put inside (I got a small inexpensive aquarium one from Walmarts) and you will still need to water them occasionally through the winter since they won't get snowed on inside there. Lyn, I wish I knew for sure that they won't go into shock but it's really hard to say. However, if they're healthy to begin with even if they do they should recover. For the most part roses are pretty hardy and you're not in a super frigid zone. In an unheated garage that protects them from the wind they should be OK. The 2 gallon pots will be fine for a dormant rose over winter but you'll need to up pot or plant them fairly quick in the spring when they do start to grow. You really don't want to up pot them in October because that will probably just encourage them to start growing when you really need them to go dormant. And it will just create more shock. Thanks, Rick! Where were you when I started my potted rose experiment? Every where I posted the idea they told me I was nuts, lol! That you couldn't winter roses in pots in cold zones. I do agree with you too that they are much tougher than we give them credit for. You're also right about the dessication. That's why I never recommend bringing roses inside! The air in most homes is just too, too dry for them. No one would want to live in a house damp enough to make a rose happy! No, you don't need to cover them, Terry. Most garages, even with a window in it, are fairly dark anyway and as long as the garage is cold and you don't have them sitting in the window they should stay dormant until early spring. Spring time is always the iffy part. The yo-yoing of temperatures is the real problem. It gets warm during the day and you get a nice spring like week or so and then boom, the bottom falls out and you go back down into freezing temps again for a few weeks. In the mean time the roses started to bud out while it was warm and then they freeze and lose all those new buds. They can only take that a couple of times before they use up all the energy they stored last fall to come back with in the spring. So the trick is to keep them from budding out in the spring for as long as possible until the temps are going to stay reliably above freezing.

As far as the sides of barrel collapsing under weight using wire, cord or rope there is a way to solve that. You use a small piece of PVC pipe maybe 1/2" or so and cut them to length to be installed. The PVC pipes are cheap and you can cut them with a hack saw or a band saw easy. Also they will not rust and last as long as the barrel. Sample image below I will make PVC a "red color" for reference and black lines represents rope,wire or cord. Tie the rope into a knot at the end first, if it is a wire then make a loop whatever it takes to STOP the rope from pulling through that first hole it will be going in to on the barrel. So again pull that rope (cord or whatever) through the first hole of barrel into the barrel but now you thread it in and through your PVC pipe you have cut to proper size, go ahead and pull it through (push it with a clothes hanger wire if it bends) an as it pops out the other end of PVC then grab it and now you feed that out the other hole in the barrel, now completly through the barrel. Grab it and pull it tight and make a knot or secure it with a clamp like a snap tie. It won't come though because it has a knot on the other side right? And that PVC is ridged so it can not bend to easy so you end up with a stiff piece of "plastic" pipe inside instead of metal. So hen you secure that rope or cord or wire on the outsides just make sure you pull it as tight as it needs to be and then secure the outside ends. If rope (cord,wire) is pulled tight then that PVC has no place to go see? So no collapse on side of barrel at that point. You do all of them that way and the barrel sides can not come in on you now because all those PVC pipes will not bend. Grab a piece of 1 or 2 foot PVC pipe in store sometime and bend it, this will give you idea on how stiff you think you might need it.

Warning to game camera buyers..BUY INFRA-RED FLASH ONLY! It's clear that animals are avoiding the annoying flash-which always scares me when I hike up there at night-and doubtless explains why there are few repeat animal photos. I can see by their tracks that they are skirting the camera, including the Big Foot. When I took photos yesterday afternoon, the ice was just melting slightly in sunny spots, and there was no new jaguar sign. I thought he'd moved on, but this morning there were several new, now frozen, scrape marks right where I'd been photographing yesterday, meaning that the jaguar had visited and scrape-marked his territory right after I left, before the temperatures dropped again. I could see that he was giving me a warning, so I circled the pond to where he'd previously left his scat, sniffing the air to see if he'd scent-marked anywhere close, like the jaguar websites said they did. Sure enough, I became aware of a very strong, pungent odor, almost a skunk-like muskiness, so I followed the smell to a scrape-marked tree a few yards away from the scat. 3-4-09, farm pond, scent-marked tree with jaguar (?) scrape From 2-24-09, Tracks and scat paw-sized claw marks From 2-24-09, Tracks and scat First scrape photographed, 3-2-09 From 2-24-09, Tracks and scat Old frozen scrape, possibly the same one? From 2-24-09, Tracks and scat 3-4-09, new frozen jaguar (?) scrape made yesterday afternoon in the same spot I'd been photographing, before night freeze From 2-24-09, Tracks and scat Several websites said jaguars are unafraid of people, which makes them easy targets for hunters. Another website claimed that Amazon Indians are frequently followed by male jaguars to escort them off their territories. Still other websites said that jaguars seldom bother to mark territories unless there is a boundary dispute or overlapping territories. Perhaps our constant poking around "his" territory is prompting the alleged jaguar to warn us off. The meerkats in Meerkat Manor are always "furiously scent-marking" bushes and rocks to "see-off" trespassers, so he could be warning us to back off. If he is imprinted on humans from being in captivity as a cub, he might see us as rivals, but maybe all jaguars view humans that way. Of course, I was here first. Websites also say that about their second year, male jaguars move on to establish their own territories, which can be up to 500 square miles, depending on food availability, so he might be moving on soon.

Anyone else tall enough to ride the March Weather Rollercoaster ... Brought all 130+ pots into the garage on Friday since they were calling for snow this Sunday and colder nighttime temps up until then. We didn't get any snow (not complaining) and the two I have that started emerging out of the ground I covered with plastic utility buckets. Tomorrow, I leave for Savannah Georgia for a friend's wedding and will be moving the potted hostas back out onto the porch since I don't want to leave them in the dark garage unattended for a week. Many have started to show their pips. Temp are supposed to be nice here out, so I'm not worried about anymore low nights or flash freezes. (I'm too trusting). Should be a proper hostagasm when I return next week though !!!