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Cabbage Leaves Turning Brown and Dying: Causes & How to Fix It

Leaves on your cabbage are browning from the edges, dying off from the bottom up, or spots are spreading until whole leaves die. How the dieback progresses, and whether spots come first, separates disease from fertilizer burn and drought.

Check these first

  • Does the browning start at the leaf edge, from a spot, or from the lowest leaves?
  • Are there black specks, powder, or mould on the dead tissue?
  • Did you fertilize, spray, or have a heatwave just before it started?

Most likely causes

From the pests and diseases recorded for this plant, the ones whose symptoms match, most serious first. Symptoms alone rarely confirm a cause, so use the linked page to check the signs and treatment.

Fusarium Yellows

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.

How to identify and treat: Fusarium Yellows

Verticillium Wilt

Only one side of the lower leaves yellows and wilts, and the symptom moves up the plant. Stem vascular tissue turns pale brown and the plant dies without ever growing well.

General description; not specific to this plant.

How to identify and treat: Verticillium Wilt

Powdery Mildew

White patches appear scattered on the upper leaf surface at first, then the whole leaf is coated in a white powder. Leaves later yellow, brown and die back, and reduced photosynthesis cuts growth and yield.

General description; not specific to this plant.

How to identify and treat: Powdery Mildew

Other possible causes

  • Downy Mildew — Pale yellow to yellow-brown angular lesions form on the upper leaf surface with a gray-pur…

Other symptoms on this plant

What other growers did about it

A page like this one can tell you what cabbage leaves turning brown and dying is and what to try. What it cannot tell you is what actually happened to someone who had it on the same plant, at the same point in the season, and what they did next.

Gadenin is a free garden journal built around that. You photograph the plant, tag what you are seeing, and the entries line up by date for each plant you grow.

  • Tag the problem and the app tells you how many other growers have logged the same thing on the same plant.
  • Growers who make their records public can be followed, so you can read what they did and how it turned out.
  • Next season your own entries come back at the same point in the year, so you check the plant before it starts.

Free on iPhone. Recording, tagging and reading public records cost nothing.

Read next

Log the date you first noticed it and any spray or feed you applied. Dieback that follows a treatment by a day or two is usually the treatment.

See what other growers did about it

Log it in the free Gadenin app and tag what you are seeing. Your photos line up by date so you can tell whether it is spreading, and you can see how many other growers have logged the same problem on the same plant, follow them and read what they did next.

Free on iPhone. Android coming later.

Gadenin free garden journalGet the app