Now that it's springtime there is lots more work to be done in our permaculture forest garden so we are holding another volunteer day. On Tuesday 3rd April we will be planting another 40 fruit bearing plants, and if there are enough volunteers, we will also start digging out a pond that we will use as a rainwater harvester. If you'd like more information about the day and details of how to volunteer please click here to view a leaflet about the day.

The garden is looking great at the moment as all the trees that we planted in December are starting to show signs of new growth. Some have leaves on already, some are starting to shoot and our peach tree has some very pretty pink blossom on it! Now that the weather has warmed up a bit, the wormeries are also doing much better and they seem to be getting through a lot more food than before. The worms seem to particularly like melon. Every time I put melon rinds in, they disappear within just a few days, all except for a really thin, waxy outer layer. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, they definately don't like potatoes and seem to be struggling a bit with the cabbage as well. Never mind, there's plenty of other stuff for them to eat!

We are having some new leaflets printed with details of our new product range to hand out to interested customers at the next trade show we are attending (IFE). Having discovered that the printing industry is the 5^th largest and 6^th most polluting industry in the world, we decided to try to find a printer that is actively doing something to reduce their environmental impact. There is a list of printers with good environmental credentials here, so I emailed all of them for quotes and further details of what they are doing to become greener.

The prices that they came back with varied enormously with the highest price being nearly three times more than the cheapest one! Similarly, the environmental credentials also varied a lot, with some just offering recycled paper and vegetable based inks whilst others were also ISO 14001, EMAS or FSC certified, some were carbon neutral and some had implemented impressive waste reduction systems. The most important thing to look for is evidence that they have reduced or eliminated the use of alcohols and VOCs in their printing process and that they have minimised the amount of water used as this is what causes the most damage.

After speaking to many different printers we finally decided to go for a company called A Local Printer. They are ISO 14001 and FSC certified, use a low or no alcohol printing process, use 100 % recycled paper, vegetable based inks, water based coatings, they appear to have a good waste management system and are working towards becoming carbon neutral.

Our wormery has been going for about 4 months now and seems to be doing very well. After trying the worms out on several different foods they seem to absolutely love melon rinds and banana skins. I put a melon rind in a few days ago and it has all disappeared apart from a very thin layer of the outer skin which is a bit waxy. However, they definitely don’t like potato peelings much. I’ve had some potato peelings in there for weeks and they are just not disappearing at the same rate as the other food. I’ve heard that this might be due to the high starch content in potatoes but I’m not really sure so if anyone knows the reason please get in touch, as I’d be very interested to find out. All the other foods seem to disappear eventually so I’m assuming that the worms are happy with their diet overall. I’ve decided that I’m going to leave the potato peel in there just to see if it does disappear eventually and how long it takes but I won’t add any more just yet.

One good sign that the worms are happy is that there are loads of worm cocoons in the wormery which means my worms are breeding! At least I hope they are worm cocoons – all the websites I have read say that they are little yellow pods but mine have a definite green shade to them! Again, if anyone know about this, please let me know.