Permaculture has already been a 30 year journey for me and every day i appreciate its relevance more and more. In recent years I have teamed up with Treflach farm, a local organic farm and together we have been on an amazing journey over the last decade. Our latest collaboration has been to design a build a mandala garden at the farm, we are inspired by Ferme du Bec Helouin in Normandy, from whom we too the basic design idea but we have translated that to fit our needs and interests here in the Wales borders. We have constructed 20 raised beds since May thisyear, each 5 m long and arrange in a circle. They are grouped in to 5's and each quarter has been managed differently. The variables are between dig and no dig, and two different compost treatments, one is animal bedding alone and and ther other animal nbedding composted with biochar an an addition. Each week we test plants grown in a selection of the beds using a refractometer, and using the BRIX scale we can estimate the percentage of sugars and other dissolved nutrients in inte sap of the plant. This is a cheap and easy way to gain insight in the quality of the soil we are building under the plants. it is too early to publish the results but we are gaining interesting insights already. Watch this space as things evolve, sector39.co.uk