My first hatch in my new incubator is now in lockdown! I hope we're doing everything right - I had issues with keeping the humidity right for the first few days, think I solved that thanks to help from some awesome people in the incubation thread. So we candled them last weekend, and I'm a beginner at knowing what I'm looking at, but it looked like at least 19 out of 22 were growing properly. One looked like the fetus might have stopped developing early because it was 1/3 of the size of the others, one looked normal-sized except there was a huge air pocket, and one had a really thick shell so I couldn't really tell.
Please wish us luck - babies should start hatching on Sunday!
Got enough of the garden planted that I could spend time setting up my final 8 beds. First I covered the new area with cardboard, then dug out all the soil in an 8x8 section, because I did a lot of work composting and amending it last year and didn't want to waste that goos soil. So dug down to clay, stored the good soil on the cardboard, cardboarded the 8x8 section, moved several trailer loads of wood chips to cover that section and fill in the hole, then placed the new raised beds. So here's where I am at:
I still need to level these, then fill 1/3 with wood chips, 1/3 with the dirt I dug out, and 1/3 with compost. Then when the pile of dirt is used up, cover the rest of the cardboard with more wood chips and place my last 4 raised beds.
These freebies I got from work are what I'm using, some industrial equipment came in them, then they were up for grabs, so I grabbed as many as I could! They're hinged at the corners, and designed to stack up on each other on a pallet, to form any height of crate. I stained them with cheap redwood stain.
They have convenient points on the bottom to poke into the ground and stay in place.
It's probably too late to use them this year, well, maybe for something plantable in the fall, like garlic.
In the meantime, here's what I have:
Don't know why this picture came out upside-down, but these dahlias sent by a wonderful person here, are coming up beautifully! The little thing in the pot is a volunteer melon that seems to be surviving.
Potatoes, with some baby lettuce and spinach interspersed.
Cukes germinated great.
Butternut not so great, this is the only one out of 10 that survived. This weekend I'll seed some pumpkins in the bare areas, 75-80 days means late September harvest, which should be fine if the weather is not too wet.
Strawberries spreading all over, but just a few tiny berries.
More dahlias, chives behind them, parsley in the back. The empty bed has beets and carrots seeded, but no sprouts yet.
Still a lot of work to do, but we're making progress.
They delivered our new DR brush cutter yesterday, can't to start using it this weekend!
But, my back was already a bit sore after all that digging and shoveling, then we thought we could lift the brush cutter in its crate on to our little cart to move it out back, but it was heavier than expected and I pulled my shoulder and neck - not too bad, just sore so I'll probably let Mr. Dog play with the brush cutter while I (hopefully) watch the chicks hatching!
I can’t collect them on the ground cos there are a lot of bushes and some nettles mixed in with them , ouch, too hot to wear boots 
I don't know why the squirrels dig in the dirt. I thought maybe they wanted to eat the bean seeds, but I found lots of bean seeds sitting on top of the dirt.
lesson learned, next year there will be fencing around the berries!
