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 $Sigma^{4k-1}$ such that $M sharp Sigma$ admits a Ricci positive metric. This follows from a new description of these manifolds as the boundaries of explicit plumbings.