How to Plant Cabbage for the Fall

Cabbage loves cool fall temperatures.

Autumn is the best time to plant late-season cabbage and other brassica vegetable varieties. When the days shorten and the overnight temperatures drop, cabbage thrives. Related to the mustard family, cabbage horticulture is traceable to the ancients Greeks and Romans. Today’s cabbage varieties offer improved hybrid plants that reliably produce bumper crops. But, you can still find heirloom cabbage seeds for an old-fashioned fall garden.

Things You'll Need

• Cabbage seeds
• Garden plot or raised bed
• Large nail
• Wooden stakes
• String
• Acidic fertilizer
• Malathion spray or powder

Instructions

1. Prepare the soil for your cabbage plot early in the fall and then let it rest. Cabbage plants need a firm surface, so resist tilling just before you plant. Choose a location where the plants will get a full day of sun. Apply an acidic fertilizer on top of the soil approximately 10 days before planting and pull weeds.

2. Drive stakes into opposite ends of the cabbage patch and tie a string taut between the stakes. Use the string line as a guide for keeping your rows straight. To reduce disruption of the soil’s crust, use a large nail and poke it into the soil, along the string line about ½-inch deep. Drop one seed in each hole. Space your holes approximately 6-inches apart and keep your rows 1-foot apart.

3. Thin the cabbage seedlings to 1-foot apart after they sprout. Continue to pull any weeds as soon as they appear, but don’t hoe the surface of the soil until the cabbage plants are at least three weeks old.

4. Watch your young cabbage plants for insects. At the first sign of pests, treat them with Malathion, either by spraying or powdering. You may treat cabbage with Malathion until two weeks before the harvest.

5. Fertilize young cabbage plants as soon as the heads begin to develop. Composted manure is a good choice because of the acidity level, but commercial fertilizer products for acid-loving plants are acceptable.

6. Support the plants after the heads form by using a hoe and raking soil from between the plants upward, toward the cabbage stem. Pack the soil around the bottom portion of the plant. This is especially important if the plants are in a windy area, since the growing head makes the plant stem and the roots unstable.

7. Use sharp garden nippers to harvest the cabbage crop. Cut the stems at ground level, leaving a little bit of the stem on the bottom of the cabbage. Although cabbage will survive light frosts, a hard freeze will kill the plants. Harvest before an expected freeze.

8. Store cabbage in a cool dark spot, in a bin filled with clean hay. You can eat cabbage all winter long if you store it in this manner.

Tips & Warnings

• Freeze cabbage by cutting it into chunks and dropping the chunks into boiling water for thirty seconds. Then remove the cabbage, drain it and place it in a freezer-proof container.

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish