Last winter, we had an outbreak of downy mildew on stock (Matthiola incana) in our greenhouses. We had a loss of 52 flats, 128-cells double seeded, which was about 13,000 plants. At around $1/stem, that’s a lot of plants and potential money in the trash, and according to our accountant, not something we could write off as a loss. It was heartbreaking, and annoying because it caused a gap in our availability right around Mother’s Day. Even with the loss of 52 flats, stock was still our number 3 crop to florists for 2015. We were projecting it to be number 1, so we knew we had to do something to prevent future loss.