We are currently busy little bees planting our next major crop Matthiola Incana, better known as Stocks, which are a species of flowering plant from the cabbage family Brassicaceae. Stocks have the most amazing scent, and when the plants are about to flower in the late Spring the scent from them is out of this world, especially of an evening. They come in the most beautiful sorbet colours including white, cream, pink, cerise, lilac and purple. To grow successfully, the plants need light and continuous moisture at just the right levels. Before planting we apply Trichoderma to the soil which is a fungi that is highly interactive in root development which helps the plant fight off any soil disease, making the plant strong and healthy, some call this Muck and Magic.
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We grow about 4 million stocks, we start planting them by hand in February and they flower from the end of April. Each plant is carefully planted into the soil through a 5 inch square wire and irrigation pipes are laid down the rows to enable us to water directly to the root thus not wasting water on path ways. As the plant grows, we carefully move the wires up by hand to keep the stocks growing nice and straight. We have shades in the glasshouse to prevent the plants from getting scorched when the sun is low in the sky, and we open vents in the glasshouse roof to ensure they get air movement and are kept at the right temperature. We cannot wait for you to see them progress from tiny plants into the most spectacular column of colourful florets!
