5th November 2024

Treflach farm, mandala garden

fedge at Treflach farm

Treflach Thursdays

Welcome to regular volunteer sessions at Treflach farm every Thursday. The farm is right on Offas dyke, close to Oswestry and Treflach is a farm that has embraced regenerative and permaculture farming techniques. As members of the GRFFN network we have developed a mandala garden, where we are doing soil building experiments and monitoring the nutients density of the produce we are growing.

We call it our weekly Permaculture Club, it is free and anyone is welcome from 10.00 am each Thursday. There is often a farm lunch, depending on the activites of the day.

Please come along to find out more.

garden at treflach farm

Mandala @Treflach

The Mandala garden was designed by a PDC group in April 2021 and we started building it in about June.  the intention is to create a olong term soil building experiment, using organic techniques based on our understanding of the soil food web.

There are 20 raised beds each of 4m square approx and half have been dig and the other 10 have followed a no dig regime.

Also 10 of them have been treted with biochar, mulch and compost whilst other 10 have only had the addition of compost and mulches.

To this mixture we are also exploring the use of green manures and compost teas. Over the course of the next few seasons we will be measuring the outputs and quality of the crops we grow.

treflach farm garden
Some inital design ideas for the horticulture area at Treflach farm, including the mandala garden, taken by a drone camera.

Lets talk soil science

The Treflach Mandala garden is set out as an ongoing experiment, to give us first hand insight in soil and sil building.

The more we learn about soil and the soil food web,the more fascinating and essential the subject becomes.

Here is the Canadain Permaculture legacy sharing the insight and learning of their studies,.

“The single most impactful thing a gardener can do is learn about how plants work. To do that, you must learn about the soil food web of life. I hope to cover this topic in detail in this video, but also keep you awake and entertained while doing so.

This is just really important information to put into your gardening tool kit, because it will save you from making many mistakes – some of which can cost you decades. This video represents years (literally) of reading books (including university textbooks), podcasts, research papers and digging that I have done.

This isn’t me talking here, this is me simply relaying the information I’ve learned in my own journey. “