I have volunteers for the second year from Sonata Pink. One group of three bloomed one month. Others keep coming up and will keep the bloom going until frost. Some are reverting to taller plants, so I will buy fresh seed next year. They are short-day plants so bloom later in the season than some annuals.

I bought one of those incubator's too and had a tough time getting the temp right. Here's what finally worked for me. I had it sitting on my breakfast table in the kitchen so it was a constant reminder to keep the eggs turned. But with all the house traffic, the door opening and closing, the ceiling fan, kids in an out of the refrigerator, ect. ect the incubator simply WOULD NOT maintain a constant temp. So I moved it to my closet. No drafts. Dark. Quiet. Small but large enough for air circulation. Perfect. Plus it was in my way in the morning before work and in the afternoon afterwork to remind me to turn the eggs. Bingo. I hatched out a bunch of button quail. Also, I went to Lowes and bought one of those digital thermometers that has a sensor on the end of a long wire. You're supposed to put the sensor outside to keep track of outdoor temp and humidity, while the unit is mounted on the wall inside. It's about he side of a hershey bar. I put the whole thing in the incubator, and it worked like a charm to keep track of temp and humidity.

The normal incubation period for chicken eggs is 21 days. I always give my eggs three days beyond that to allow any late bloomers to hatch. By 26 days, safe to say the eggs are no good. You can candle the eggs as seamommy suggested, but I would be really hesitant to shake the eggs--rotten eggs can break (!) and viable eggs can be killed by the shaking, which would be a heartbreak after being so close to hatch. You can listen for peeping and also closely watch an egg for movement... Your second bird, if I read right, is at around 14 days? There's no way to tell if she's going to stick with it--you know your birds better than anyone. Best you can do is leave her to it and try not to disturb her. You can have an incubator fired up and standing by just in case she does abandon them. Cochins are pretty darned good setters, though, so chances are excellent she'll see it through. :) If you click on my 'My Page' link, there is a link to my chicken info site, it may help also. You need to be VERY sure to provide protection for the chicks and mom from jealous hens and predators. Good luck & have fun! :) Velvet ~:>

Bruce, newbie314, It's not really a secret at all. The theory is rather simple and common sense but it does however take some time to get used to.... Basically, it all has to do with timing and removal of worms. Also, your main goal would be to harvest "worms" and not castings. What I used to do was start a new bin, then let it process for 3 to 4 months and then dump the entire contents including worms and castings. I would then sort out the worms from the finished castings but when I weighed my harvested worms, there would always be the same biomass as when I started. No matter how I devised schemes to split my bins up the same things always happened. However, I did obtain some pretty good vermicompost. Instead of waiting for a bin to process for three to four months as described above, the technique is to remove "some" of your worms about every 30 days or so and place them into a new bin. By removing worms on a continous basis ( every 30 days or so), the worms will never reach their max population for the bin. Also, you want to remove some of the castings each time you remove some of the worms. I have been told that the castings building up is what is responsible for the worms not reproducing too fast. You will have to ask Kelly about that but I only know it works, so here is what I have been doing as suggested by others and it works really good... I start a vermicompost bin and care for it just like normal. However, after about 6 weeks (not months) when you first notice castings starting to appear at the top of the bedding (still lots of unproccessed material), then it is time to harvest "some" of the worms. To do this I attract the worms to the top of the bedding by placing some food on "top" of the bedding surface. After a couple of days, a large number of the worms will be attracted to the top of the bin where the food is at. Then, simply take the top 4 inches of the bedding (worms and all) and remove it from the bin. At this point in time, you have removed a large portion of your worms from the bin, but you really do not want to remove too many. Replace about 1/2 - 3/4 of them back into the old bin. All as your trying to do is to remove a small portion of your worms (maybe 20% or so) and place them into a new bin.. Also, in addition to the 4 inches of bedding and worms that I remove, I also remove a couple more inches of vermicompost. So all together, I have removed about 6 inches of vermicompost/bedding from the original bin. You need to replace this right away with new fresh bedding material. You can start a new bin with the few worms (and vermicompost) that you have removed from the original bin. Then, every 30 days, remove some more worms from the original bin and throw them into the second bin that you have already started. Make sure you also remove some of the vermicompost. So, if you remove some worms every 30 days, and if you make sure that you also remove about 6 inches of castings (or vermicompost) then your worms should multiply good. This takes experience to get the hang of because if you remove too many worms from the original bin, then breeding will be slow. Also, you cannot remove just worms but you must also remove some vermicompost and replace it with fresh bedding. I don't know the exact mechanism behind why this works I only know it works for me. I have been told by others who use similar techniques that as the castings build up then the worms do not breed as much. If I am incorrect about why certain things happen here, then you will have to excuse me but I have only propogated what I have been told. Kelly will hopefully correct this if any of the facts are bunk. I only know that this technique works because I have been using it for some time now and it doesn't take long before you will be operating lots of bins. I had so many bins that I eventually had to start some outside systems and it happened in short order. By adding new bedding every 30 days when you remove some of the worms and bedding, you are sort of "diluting" the ratio of castings to brown bedding material. If you do not remove some of the castings then each time you remove some of the worms, it really will not do you much good because the worms will slow down in breeding from the castings building up. So, the two important factors are to remove some of your worms every 30 days and also to remove some of the castings every 30 days as well (at the same time). In addition to the original bin, you have started a second bin with a few worms in it. You will be adding to this bin every 30 days with a few worms from the original bin. Once you start to see castings building up in this bin, then you can do the same thing to it that you did with the original bin. You can start a third bin. Another important thing to know, is that in the original bin, you should do a total harvest of castings after 6 months or so. You will be taking worms out of it every 30 days but after about 6 months the castings towards the bottom half of the bin will be processed a great deal. I hope I explained this well enough but if not I will try again, just let me know what you may be foggy on or don't quite understand. Darryl