When should I grow vegetables instead of buying them?

Grow your own when supermarket prices rise 15% or more month-over-month and stay elevatedu2014a sign of supply squeeze. These price spikes mean your seed investment pays off significantly versus shopping costs. Premium vegetables like capsicum at $14/kg are prime candidates: a $2 seed packet becomes highly competitive. Check prices weekly before planting to avoid growing crops that will be cheap by harvest time. Look for rising price trends as your growing signal.

What causes vegetable prices to rise and fall at supermarkets?

Supermarket vegetable prices fluctuate based on supply and demand. Big increases (15%+ month-over-month) signal supply squeezes from drought, floods, delayed imports, or pest pressure on commercial crops. Sharp falls indicate oversupplyu2014growers produced more than expected demand. Seasonal factors and competition between Woolworths, Coles, Aldi, and IGA also drive changes. Understanding these drivers helps you time both growing and shopping decisions strategically.

Is it worth growing vegetables when supermarket prices keep dropping?

Nou2014when prices fall 15% or more, it's usually a glut. Growers have oversupplied the market, so shop-bought produce is cheap and abundant. Growing those crops now wastes valuable garden space and time. Instead, buy cheap at the supermarket and dedicate your beds to premium vegetables (over $10/kg) or crops with rising prices. This approach maximises ROI: focus home growing on high-value crops where homegrown produce beats shop prices significantly.

How often do supermarket vegetable prices change in Australia?

Prices change daily and can shift weekly during seasonal transitions or supply disruptions. Major Australian retailers like Woolworths, Coles, Aldi, and IGA adjust pricing frequently based on stock and demand. Daily price data is typically current within 10u201312 hours, so your morning check shows overnight pricesu2014current enough for shopping and growing decisions. Tracking these changes helps you spot opportunities early.

Navigating the price tracker

The live supermarket price tracker

Features and tools6 min read

/prices/ is the daily supermarket vegetable price tracker. 76 crops across Woolworths, Coles, Aldi and IGA. Updated overnight by a Playwright scraper.

76+Veggies tracked

4Retailers

0.8%Null rate

DailyRefresh cycle

On this page

What you see
How to read it
Clicking a crop name
Data freshness

What you see

One row per crop. Columns:

Crop name — click for the per-veggie detail page
Cheapest retailer — Woolies / Coles / Aldi / IGA, whoever has it cheapest today
Today’s $/kg — four-retailer average
30-day trend arrow — ↑ rising, → stable, ↓ falling
12-month sparkline — miniature chart showing the year’s trajectory

How to read it

Big rising prices — grow your own

Red arrow up + ≥15% month-over-month = supply squeeze. Common triggers: floods, drought, imports delayed, insect pressure on commercial crops.

A capsicum at $14/kg for 6 weeks running means something went wrong with supply. It’s a signal that growing your own in season will pay off significantly — your $2 of seed is now comparable to $10 of shop produce.

Big falling prices — don’t bother growing this now

Green arrow down + ≥15% = glut. Growers harvested more than demand expected. Don’t waste bed space growing these right now — buy cheap, grow something else.

This is the single most actionable insight in the tracker. Scanning weekly saves you from planting crops that will be cheap at the shops by the time you harvest.

Stable prices — staples

Horizontal arrow = price held within ±5% for 30 days. These are the reliable “always worth growing” crops — no dramatic savings from home growing, no surprise costs at the shops. Staples.

Filters and sorting

Five quick filters top of the table:

All 76 — default view
Over $10/kg — premium crops where growing your own pays off biggest
Rising ≥10% — currently squeezed, act now
Falling ≥10% — currently glutted, skip these
Stable — dependable staples

Sort by clicking any column header. Common sorts:

Price descending — most expensive first (shopping planning)
Trend descending — biggest risers first (growing priority)
Alphabetical — reference lookup

Clicking a crop name

Takes you to /prices/{crop}/ — the per-veggie detail page with 12-month price chart, per-retailer breakdown, growing guide links, pest warnings, and an ROI estimate for growing it yourself. Full per-veggie page coverage.

Data freshness

Prices are scraped every night:

23:00 AEST — scraper starts
00:10 AEST — daily JSON file written
00:15 AEST — rsync’d to production site

If you check the tracker at 10 AM, you’re looking at overnight data — current within 10 hours.

Null rate — the honest stat

The scraper has a 0.8% overall null rate. Per retailer:

Woolworths (API): 0.0% — their API is stable and authoritative
Coles (DOM scrape): 0.6%
Aldi (DOM scrape): 2.3% — they rotate weekly specials which break DOM selectors
IGA (DOM scrape): 0.0%

When a price is null, the crop row shows “—” in the affected column; the four-retailer average skips that retailer for that day.

How members actually use the tracker

Monday morning shopping planner

Sort by Cheapest today. Shop accordingly — lettuce at Aldi this week, tomatoes at Coles. Works for households where the shopping list is flexible.

Season planning

Before autumn planting, scan the “rising” filter over the last 30 days. Crops rising consistently are usually about to peak in price — those are the high-value candidates for home growing.

ROI sanity check

If your ROI report shows broccoli at $5.80/kg and you see /prices/ displaying broccoli at $5.80/kg, the data’s aligned. If they differ substantially, there’s a caching issue — a browser hard refresh usually fixes it.

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