near ann arbor MI .. my straws.. have been evergreen all winter.. they dont care about frost or freeze.. IF THEY ARE DORMANT ... and you didnt say how active they are in the pot ... i gotta think.. in z7.. they ought to go in the ground ... but more facts please ken

Hi Beth, It is good to see you back. We miss you when you're too busy to post. Cabbage is a cool-season veggie and I think it does equally well if planted in late winter for harvest in summer or if planted in late summer for harvest in late fall or early winter. The advantage to planting in fall is that the cabbage worms and cabbage moths are not as active as they are in spring. Cabbage is very cold hardy so it can be planted pretty early in winter....anytime that you think air temperatures will remain consistently above about 22-24 degrees or so. The key is they have to be hardened to cold temps before they're planted, otherwise the first night that temps drop below about 25 degrees, they're likely to suffer damage or die. Our winters are so erratic that this can be difficult. Still, I get a great cabbage harvest most years. Cabbage always is iffy as a spring crop because we can go from 'too cold' to 'too hot' almost overnight. You'll get the best yield and the highest-quality cabbage if you plant it early enough that it does most of its growing before the daytime high temps begin regularly exceeding 65 degrees or so. Having said that, I've harvested perfectly good cabbage in mid- to late-June when temperatures are in the 90s as long as it gets adequate moisture. One of the biggest problems with cabbage in our climate is that it can bolt and go to seed if the plants are exposed to temperatures in the low to mid-40s for an extended period of time. Like onions, they are biennials and will go to seed if exposed to cold temps for an extended period once they reach a certain size. I believe that is why cabbage has a reputation for being hard to grow in our climate. If you want to plant for a fall harvest, try to start seeds about 12 weeks before your average first fall freeze. This will give your cabbage the best chance to grow properly and head up. In addition to the problems caused by temperatures that get too hot (or too cold) at the wrong time, cabbage loopes and imported cabbage worms both eat big holes in the leaves. Prevent them with regular applications of Bt, the active ingredient in Thuricide and Dipel and similar caterpillar killers. Cabbages also are prone to many foliar diseases which can ruin the crop, mostly those that are fungal in nature. These include downy mildew and alternaria. Regular treatment with fungicides may be needed to prevent these. Cabbages are huge space hogs. The ones in my garden, which probably were started from seed indoors in Feb. and transplanted out in early- to mid-March, are now about 24" across, so give them wide spacing. Cababge will store quite a while....a month or two in a fridge, but of course, you don't want to fill up your refrigerator with 19 heads of cabbage. You can make sauerkraut or freezer slaw. Like Diane, I have a freezer slaw recipe somewhere, and I'll try to dig it up....unless she beats me to it and posts hers first, because likely they are pretty much the same recipe. I'm now back from the swap, but too tired to remember where the recipe is. I'll get right on it tomorrow though. Aside from the fact that you have to spray with Bt to prevent damage from the caterpillers, I think cabbage is incredibly easy to grow. You harvest it when it nears the DTM you know from your seed packet (if you can remember it). Otherwise, you harvest it when the heads feel solid and firm. Also, your heads should be about the expected mature size for whatever variety you're growing, but in a very rainy year, they'll get bigger and the opposite is true in a very dry year. As with just about every other oool season crop we try to grow here, the main issue is how quickly we go from too hot to too oold or vice versa. One thing I really like about cabbage is that it is not picky, picky, picky about soil. It grows well on clay....perhaps even better than it does on more well-draining sandy and sandy loam soils. It is shallow-rooted and dries out quickly so clay's ability to hold moisture helps produce a great cabbage crop. Dawn

I put broccoli and cauliflower in in October also. It's usually not a problem here in So. Oregon. This is our "rainy" season. We haven't had rain in months! The temp has been in the low-mid 20's at night for that long. Beautiful cold days. I admit they look terrible in the morning but by noonish they perk back up. I'm just not sure how long they can take the temps. They are starting to look pretty frazzled. Every day they don't perk up quite as much as the day before. Normally we would be eating it by now but I guess because of the cold, they aren't growing very fast at all. I'm sure a cover would help I just don't have any spare. Wasn't expecting to have to cover cole crops in December!

LOL, I agree. Son got sick yesterday so I didn't get a chance to make anything with it or to thank you both! I'm going to make Napa Col Slaw and eat it for a long time I guess. Won't buy one THIS big again. That's about what I paid for mine... Thanks again for the help...miss this place, :) Keilamarie