Positive Ricci curvature on highly connected manifolds

For $k\ge 2,$ let $M^{4k-1}$ be a $(2k-2)$-connected closed manifold. If $k\equiv 1$ mod $4$ assume further that $M$ is $(2k-1)$-parallelisable. Then there is a homotopy sphere ${\mathrm{\Sigma }}^{4k-1}$ such that $M\mathrm{♯}\mathrm{\Sigma }$ admits a Ricci positive metric. This follows from a new description of these manifolds as the boundaries of explicit plumbings.