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How to Grow Cabbage: Growing Guide to Planting, Care & Harvest

A heading brassica set out as transplants and netted against caterpillars, cut when the head feels firm and solid to the hand.

Cabbage

Brassica oleracea var. capitata

Growing calendar

Typical timing for central Japan (Kanto region). Shift it for your own climate, and record your actual dates.

Sow / plantGrowing

Guides

Common problems

Start from what you can see on the plant.

Pests and diseases (38)

Problems recorded for this plant, most serious first.

Cabbage White Caterpillar

MajorPest

Irregular holes appear in the leaves and eventually only the veins remain. Dark green pellets of frass are conspicuous at the crown and on leaf undersides.

Aphids

MajorPest

Small green or black insects cluster on shoot tips and leaf undersides, crinkling the leaves and stopping growth. The honeydew they excrete supports sooty mold that blackens the foliage.

Fusarium Yellows

MajorDisease

Yellowing starts on the lower leaves, the petioles twist and the plant leans to one side. Vascular tissue browns, growth stops, and heading vegetables may die without ever forming a head.

Black Rot

MajorDisease

V-shaped yellowing spreads inward from the leaf margins and the veins darken into a black network. As it advances the whole plant wilts and dies.

Diamondback Moth

MajorPest

Larvae graze the leaf tissue from below, leaving the upper skin as white window-like patches. As they grow they chew many small holes and also attack the growing point.

Cutworms

MajorPest

Typically a newly transplanted seedling is severed at soil level and found toppled the next morning. Scratch the soil beside the cut seedling and a gray-brown caterpillar turns up.

Clubroot

MajorDisease

Leaves wilt during the day and recover morning and evening, and growth is markedly poor. Pull the plant and the roots carry many spindle-shaped or irregular galls.

Cabbage Armyworm

MajorPest

Young larvae feed in groups on the leaf underside, eating only the tissue so the leaf turns translucent white. Larger larvae chew big holes and can strip a plant bare in a single night.

Sclerotinia Rot

CommonDisease

The crown, stem or head rots in a water-soaked way and is covered in white cottony mycelium. Black sclerotia later form inside and on the surface, and the plant wilts and dies.

Tobacco Cutworm

CommonPest

Many larvae gather on the leaf underside and graze the tissue away, leaving white skeletonized patches. Once they disperse they cause heavy damage to leaves, pods and fruit.

Verticillium WiltPowdery MildewWhite RustDamping-offBacterial Soft RotOnion ThripsRoot-lesion NematodeRoot-knot NematodeGray MoldBacterial SpotDowny MildewRing RotChoanephora Wet RotBacterial GallVerticillium WiltPythium RotMosaic DiseaseTip BlightSeedling Damping-offCrown RotRoot DecayPlant-parasitic NematodesCalcium DeficiencyBacterial RotYellowsAlternaria Sooty SpotAlternaria Black SpotBacterial Leaf Spot

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Keep a growing history for Cabbage

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