Flower · Brassicaceae
When to sow stocks
Grown entirely for the scent, which is clove-like and carries across a garden at dusk. The cut-flower trade depends on it in spring, and it is one of the few annuals that is genuinely better in cool weather.
Start seed indoors
8 weeks before
Counted from your last spring frost.
Plant out
2 weeks before
Counted from your last spring frost.
Days to maturity
80-110
From planting out to a first picking.
Those weeks become real dates once you name a place.
Timing, in frost-relative terms
Seed packets rarely give calendar dates, because a date that suits one latitude is wrong at another. They give offsets from the last spring frost instead, and those offsets are what make stocks plantable anywhere.
- Start seed indoors 8 weeks before the last frost.
- Plant out 2 weeks before the last frost.
- Expect 80–110 days to maturity, counted from planting out.
- Hardy in USDA zones 5a–10a.
Getting the timing right
Start indoors eight weeks before the last frost and plant out two weeks before it. Stocks need cool nights, below about 15C, for several weeks to initiate flower spikes, so early planting is not optional - a late-planted stock grows into a leafy plant that never blooms.
Frost tolerance
Hardy to about -8C. In zone 8 and warmer the sensible approach is autumn planting for late-winter flowers, and in hot climates it is a winter crop only.
Classified as hardy, with damage expected below -8°C (17.6°F)17.6°F (-8°C).