🌸 Stock

What it looks like

How to grow

Stock is a cool-weather flower, 12–30 inches tall, with dense spikes of single or double flowers in white, pink, lavender, purple, and cream, and a sweet clove scent that makes it a favorite cut flower. It blooms best in cool weather — spring in most climates, fall and winter in mild ones — and fades in summer heat, so time it like a cool-season vegetable: sow seed indoors 6–8 weeks before last frost or direct-sow in early spring, spacing 12–24 inches apart, in full sun to part shade in rich, well-drained soil. In mild climates (zones 7–10), stock can be a short-lived perennial; elsewhere, grow it as a spring annual and replant in fall where winters are mild. Double-flowered types are the showiest but are sterile — buy them as plants, since they do not come true from seed.

Water & feeding

Keep soil evenly moist; stock likes steady moisture and wilts in drought. Mulch to hold moisture and keep roots cool. Feed with compost at planting and a light balanced feed during growth.

Common problems

• Fading in heat — stock is a cool-weather plant; plant early, give afternoon shade in warm climates.
• Damping off in seedlings — sow in clean mix, give air flow, do not overwater.
• Clubroot in brassica-heavy soil — rotate; stock is a brassica relative.
• Short bloom in warm springs — succession-sow for a longer season.

Harvest

Cut stems for bouquets when about half the florets on a spike are open — they last well in water and scent a room. Deadhead spent spikes to prolong bloom in cool weather. Save seed only from single-flowered types; doubles are sterile.

Saving seeds

Stock is a cool-season flower, and its seed has one rule that matters more than any other: save seed only from single flowers. The big, showy double flowers are sterile — they make no seed at all — and the seed you collect will come from the single-flowered plants in the patch. If your stock is all doubles, there is no seed to save, and that is the variety telling you it can only be grown from a packet.

Let the seed pods ripen on the plant until they are dry and brown and the seed rattles inside, then collect them into a paper bag. Sow on the surface of moist mix, because the seed needs light, and keep it cool — 60 to 65°F is ideal, and warm soil kills germination. Germination usually comes in one to two weeks.

Seedlings will vary in color and in whether they come out single or double, so save from the plants you liked best and accept the mix. Dry the seed thoroughly before storing; it keeps a few years in a cool, dry jar.

In Florida, stock is a fall-through-spring flower, happiest in north and central Florida; in south Florida it is a winter annual at best. Sow in fall for winter and spring flowers, and let it reseed itself if it is happy — a stock that volunteers is a stock that likes your garden.

Varieties

Every named variety of Stock with its own growing guide:

• Cinderella Antique Pink Stock — The dwarf antique pink: compact plants with frilly, double, pale-pink flowers with greenish-yellow centers — the stock for pots and noses.
• White Goddess Stock — The white goddess: tall stems of large, sweet double white blooms with a pale green heart — the stock for bouquets and evening scent.