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.

You should be able to determine when it's possible to plant napa cabbage by using the USDA zone info for Smithfield.

Planting Calendar for Napa cabbage

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

Napa cabbage tend to make it in a bit of cold which means that you can plant them quite a bit earlier in the year than other frost tender plants.

The earliest that you can plant napa cabbage in Smithfield is February. However, you really should wait until March 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 September. Any later than that and your napa cabbage may not have a chance to fully mature. You can get started a couple of weeks earlier by starting your napa cabbage indoors.

Last Frost Date

In Smithfield the average date of last frost happens on March 15. You should expect an average low temperature of 10°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Smithfield is an average the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Half of the time in Smithfield you get surprised by a frost after March 15 so be sure to be ready to protect your napa cabbage if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Smithfield

Here is the info for USDA Zone 8a.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	March 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	November 15
Lowest Expected Low	10°F
Highest Expected Low	15°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is 10°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near 15°F.

Plants to Grow in Smithfield

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