One of the first steps you take when you are determining your gardening schedule is find your USDA Zone info. The zone info helps tell us things like average date of last frost and lowest expected temperature for your area.

A common way of making a decision about when it's the best time to plant napa cabbage is to examine the USDA zone info for Berkeley.

Planting Calendar for Napa cabbage

Frost tolerance for napa cabbage:	Very tolerant of frost.
When to plant:	Up to 7 weeks before last frost.

Since napa cabbage are very cold tolerant you can plant them earlier in the year than other plants that might not handle the cold.

The earliest that you can plant napa cabbage in Berkeley is January. However, you really should wait until February if you don't want to take any chances.

The last month that you can plant napa cabbage and expect a good harvest is probably October. If you wait any later than that and your napa cabbage may not have a chance to really do well. Starting your napa cabbage indoors is a great way to get them started a few weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

On average all chance of frost has passed is on January 31 in Berkeley. In the coldest months of winter you can expect an average low temperature of 30°F.

Just be sure to remember that the actual date of last frost may not be accurate from year to year because it is based on the USDA zone info for Berkeley and it will vary from year to year. Since half of the time in Berkeley last frost occurs after January 31 be ready to protect your napa cabbage if you have a surprise late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Berkeley

Here is the info for USDA Zone 10a.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	January 31
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	December 15
Lowest Expected Low	30°F
Highest Expected Low	35°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is 30°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near 35°F.

Plants to Grow in Berkeley

You may be interested in your other planting guides for Berkeley.