sowing brassica seeds in winter?

This might be a bit silly but, has anyone ever experimented with sowing brassica seeds in winter? Last year I had some kale plants grow in early spring where I harvested seeds the previous summer.  So I "sowed" about  10 cabbage seeds on 4 Dec 2025 to find out if it is workable. Of course, I don't expect anything to happen until March at the earliest if at all. What do you think?

The seeds will survive but won't come up until spring so you'd be better off holding off because it's a long time to forget where you planted them and keeping them weeded is very important when they're little.

The one advantage is they will come up when they are ready and not when you are ready so they tend to sprout earlier.

Hi Ian, welcome to the forum. What zone are you at and how cold does it get in winter? You might see the seedlings sprouting in the next couple weeks if your ground is not frozen.

I am interested to hear how it goes. Cabbage seems like one of the more frail brassicas. I would expect kale to come up very well though. Maybe the wet winter soils would give the cabbage a better chance?

I have various brassicas that I just leave to self-seed every fall. They come up just fine.

I live in Mo. zone 6a. Currently the ground is frozen. Spring around here is usually wet so I thought that if I can let plants germinate as early as possible I might be ahead of the curve.

Last year I planted lettuce, peas, carrots, and broccoli very early, February, during a warm spell. This works very well for lettuce and carrots, so I had wanted to try a few other species. Sadly, the peas and broccoli completely failed.

I actually had some brassicas seeds sowed in winter. On November 18th, I double dug the bed tomatoes used to grow and amended with shredded leaves, gypsum and biochar and transplanted several bunches of crowded garlic. In between the rows I sowed a mixture of brassicas, flax, carrot and lettuce seeds. I was hoping they would sprout quickly as living mulch. The cold airs hit early this year and we had multiple days below freezing plus snow down to 22F/ -5.5C. Today the snow thawed and I got to check the seedlings finally. Most of them emerged unharmed! They probably will grow very slowly through the winter but this is a good opportunity to test their hardiness. If they do make it, I will pull the garlic geeens and mix in compost in the vacant furrows. If not, they are easy to start indoors anyway.