Vegetable · Brassicaceae
When to plant cabbages
Transplant well before the last frost. Cabbage grows best in cool weather and firm soil.
Start seed indoors
8 weeks before
Counted from your last spring frost.
Plant out
3 weeks before
Counted from your last spring frost.
Days to maturity
70-100
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 cabbages plantable anywhere.
- Start seed indoors 8 weeks before the last frost.
- Plant out 3 weeks before the last frost.
- Expect 70–100 days to maturity, counted from planting out.
- Can also be sown in late summer for an autumn crop or to overwinter.
Getting the timing right
Spring cabbage sown in late summer and overwintered gives the earliest crop of the year. Summer and autumn types go in from an early indoor sowing.
Frost tolerance
Hardy to about -8C, and savoy types considerably lower. Young transplants handle frost far better than most gardeners expect.
Classified as hardy, with damage expected below -8°C (17.6°F)17.6°F (-8°C).