The climate-resilient nature-entangled way to garden with Duncan Cocking

Planting guides and sow-what-when calendars are great and all, but what happens when the seasons don't play nice? When spring arrives earlier, frost hits later, or heatwaves burn your crops to a crisp? There's no controlling the weather, but with tools like phenology, you can make better predictions and grow more food!Duncan Cocking (of Leaf, Root & Fruit) is an amazing gardener and educator from Kyneton in Southern Australia. He helps people tune into more-than-human patterns and cycles to build their own hyper-local and climate resilient gardening calendars, and has a wealth of wisdom about living more joyfully too.In this convo:Why spring is two weeks earlier this yearDuncan's early years immersed in nature and connected to countryWhy he's not that interested in working hardMid-30s career changePattern recognition in the veggie patchHow to use phenologyNature based indicators to tell you went to plantThe two most critical aspects of gardening!!!Connection through failuresWhy to RELAXXXXX about how to gardenWood ducks tell you when you plant tomatoesCrazy record keepingHow the hell to collate so much dataHabits of the highly observantHow do nature’s patterns work, NO LIKE, HOW?Being conversant with the landDuncan is an ostrichDisconnecting from the World Wide WebHow to preserve your mental health with a hyper-focus on localGetting kids into the gardenGive your kids scary toolsGarden gimmicksHow to grow avos in cold climatesSpring gardening to-dos RIGHT NOW🧙‍♀  LINKY POOSDuncan’s home on the webLeaf, Root & Fruit on SubstackLeaf, Root & Fruit on InstagramAndrew Turbill, the bird guy🧡 Support Reskillience on Patreon 🧡☕ Buy Me A Coffee (or an avo or a loaf of bread) ☕Gratitude to the field recordist Romuald Mikusek, XC935811. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/935811.