Jan–MarApr–JunJul–SepOct–Dec
Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-192
Chinese Cabbage
Brassica rapa subsp pekinensis
Chinese cabbage (napa) forms a dense, crisp, mild-sweet head best eaten raw in salads, but the plant is really governed by day length and heat rather than cold - it bolts to flower once temperatures push past about 80 F, so growing it well means timing it around summer, not winter. Because of that, an autumn planting produces heads while a spring planting almost always bolts before it heads up, though that isn't wasted: the flowering shoots it sends up are sweet and tender and cook just like broccoli raab. It's a heavy feeder that needs constant moisture and rich soil, since with this crop how fast it grows is close to the same thing as how good it tastes. It shares its rotation constraints with a long list of related brassicas, so once clubroot shows up in a bed, the whole cabbage-turnip-mustard family needs to stay off that ground, not just this one crop.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 4–7
- Soil
- Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Well-Drained · Moderate
Vertical layer
Herbaceous- Soil pH
- 5–8
- Plant type
- Annual
- Mature height
- 12–24 in
- Mature spread
- 6–9 in
- Plant spacing
- 12–36 in
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- Seed
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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