Ducklings

I think it's easier hatching chicks rather than ducklings. We had set eggs under a broody Jersey giant and although she sat the full time not one egg hatched, on autopsy of the eggs, one had died in shell just a few days before due date, one had died a bit earlier than that and the others were addled, this of course could have been the cause of the two deaths. We should have candled the eggs each week, but the hen would not allow us to touch the eggs.
We do have ducklings hatching from the incubator but once again over a three day period, as the later ones are all from one end of the incubator on each hatch, we have concluded that it is not working correctly.
So far five have hatched but unfortunately one has died, why we don't know, it's the first time we have lost a new born but it's still sad, there is something so appealing about ducklings, more so than chicks.
We also two ducks sitting on eggs, they are sharing the nest, so hopefully they will manage to produce some young for us.

The garden is still giving us an abundance of veg, we are spoilt for choice, lots of Calabrese and beans. We have come to the end of the first flush of strawberries, we have been eating them since April, so now I will clean arround the plants, remove any dead leaves and then give the plants a good feed of seaweed, hopefully the will then produce again up until November as long as we get no frosts.

I have a mystery with Sweet peas, although I planted a mixture of colours into modules and had no way of knowing which was which colour when I planted them out, all the flowers in the containers have turned out deep purple and the ones in the flower beds are all pink, no sign of the white ones. A similar thing has happened to a friend of ours, but this time with Lobelia, she had put a pinch of mixed colours into modules, they are now in bloom, purple with purple white with white and pink with pink, very strange considering how small the seeds are.