Taking Stock

I worked on clearing off more of the raised beds in the vegetable garden yesterday and discovered that the Stock flowers I planted in late spring were attempting to bloom.

I told the story of this flower in another blog post, which you can read for the backstory if you’d like, but honestly, I try to make it so there is something to gain from reading just a single blog post without requiring the reader to know all the background information.

Stock (Mattholia incasa) is in the same family as cabbage so I wasn’t surprised when it mostly sat and sulked through the warm days of summer. Birds of a feather, and all that. Or should we say “plants of a family?” We all know that the Brassicas love the cooler weather.

At this point we could veer off into a discussion about whether or not you can judge all plants by the botanical family they’ve been put in, but that would take us a long way from a simple story.

Okay, one side note about these being in the cabbage family, Brassicaceae. Whenever I plant other members of this family in the garden—broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts—the European cabbage butterflies arrive and lay their eggs at the base of the plants. The eggs hatch, and the larva are soon devouring the leaves of my cabbages. But there isn’t a single bug bite on the Stock plants. Hmmm… If I were running things, I’d make Stock plants more attractive to those butterflies and their offspring, and then I could plant Stock as a trap plant.

A gardener can dream.

Anyway, the simple story is I found the Stock still growing after the long hot summer and attempting to flower now that is cooler. I say “cooler” but the last few days have been warm, but to talk about the weather would also be a tangent.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that they also had quite a few seed heads on them. Though that means I missed seeing some of the flowers in bloom… which could be another tangent of a discussion about if a plant blooms and no one sees it…

But we’ll leave that discussion for another day.

I could have unceremoniously thrown the plants and seed heads into the compost bin, but instead I decided to save some of those seeds to sow again next spring, but I’ll do it earlier. Honestly, those Stocks deserve a chance to show how lovely and fragrant they can be because I didn’t give them that chance this year. Sowed them too late, neglected them in a corner of the veg garden, and all that.

Check in next spring to see how they do.

And check in tomorrow because I had two topics in mind for today. I’ve saved the other one for tomorrow! (Unless something happens in the garden today, that is a better topic for tomorrow!)