Every vegetable GardenBuddy.au tracks gets its own page, at a plain, guessable address like gardenbuddy.au/prices/tomato/. There are 79 of these pages live right now, one per crop, and each one carries a real price history behind it, not just a single number for today. Here is what one of these pages actually shows, using tomato as the example, and how to get the most out of it.
A minute or so on what a per-vegetable price page shows and how to read it.
What a vegetable price page actually shows
Load /prices/tomato/ and the top of the page gives you the current average price per kilo, when that price was last recorded, and a trend badge showing whether the price is rising, falling, or holding steady over the months on file. As of today that reads $7.44/kg for tomato, up 7.7% per month over the 6 months of data GardenBuddy.au currently holds, tracked at 2 of the 4 retailers the site follows: Woolworths, Coles, Aldi and IGA.
Underneath the headline number sit four stat cards: the current average, the lowest price seen on file, the highest price seen on file, and how many shops are being tracked for that crop. For tomato that is a $3.00 low and a $29.00 high, both genuine scraped figures, not smoothed. Below that, each retailer that stocks the crop gets its own card with its own price, and the cheapest one is tagged. Aldi is currently the cheapest tomato at $5.98/kg, against Coles at $8.90/kg.
Not every vegetable is sold by the kilo. Where the shops sell something by the item, the bunch, or the pack instead, the page shows that shelf price directly and labels it as such, rather than inventing a per-kilo figure nobody could check against a shelf. A crop with no reliable current price at all gets an honest “no current price” state instead of a fake $0.00.
Why it matters
A single “veg prices are up” headline tells you nothing about what to actually do in your own kitchen or your own garden bed. A page per vegetable means you can check the one crop you are about to buy or plant, see whether this month is actually a good time to buy it, and compare that against what it would cost you to grow instead. The page also lists the pests and diseases that specifically affect that crop, ranked critical, high, or moderate, with a peak-month flag where one applies, so the same page that tells you the price also tells you what is going to try to eat the crop if you grow it yourself.
Where GardenBuddy.au has both a real seed or seedling price and a real yield figure for a crop, the page adds a “Worth growing your own” box comparing the seed cost against what that yield would be worth at today’s supermarket price. Tomato does not currently show this box, because the seed cost in our data for it is unverified, and we would rather show nothing than a made-up number. When a crop’s box is missing, that is the reason, not an oversight.
How to use it
- Check a price before you shop: open
/prices/<vegetable>/for whatever you’re about to buy and see today’s average and the cheapest shop right now. - See the free 3-month trend: add your email (no card required) and the chart unlocks the last 3 months of that crop’s price movement instead of just today’s figure.
- Get the full history: a Starter membership unlocks every month GardenBuddy.au has on file for that crop, not just the last 3.
- Check what will attack it before you plant: scroll to the pest and disease list further down the same page, it’s specific to that crop and not gated behind anything.
- Jump straight to growing it: pick your climate zone or enter your postcode in the “Grow it yourself” box partway down the page, and it links straight to that crop’s planting guide for your zone.
- Browse all 79 at once: the Veg prices hub lists every crop GardenBuddy.au tracks, A to Z.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an account to see any of it? No. The current price, the historic low and high, the per-retailer breakdown, and the pest and disease list are all open to everyone. A free account (just an email) unlocks the 3-month price chart and the full growing guide for your climate zone.
Why does one vegetable show a “Worth growing your own” box and another doesn’t? That box only appears when GardenBuddy.au has a real, checked seed or seedling price and a real measured yield for that crop. Where either figure is missing or still unverified, the box is left out rather than filled in with a guess.
Why is a vegetable sometimes priced “each” instead of per kilo? Some crops, like a whole cabbage or a bunch of silverbeet, are mostly sold by the item at the shops we track, not by weight. Rather than divide by a weight no shop actually published, the page shows the real shelf price and says plainly that it isn’t a per-kilo figure.
How many vegetables does this cover? 79 as of today, each with its own page at /prices/<vegetable>/, generated from the same live price-scraping pipeline that feeds the rest of GardenBuddy.au.
Related features
- Veg prices hub: every tracked vegetable in one A to Z list, the starting point if you don’t already know which crop’s page you want.
- Veggie Guide: the climate-zone growing guide each price page links to once you’ve picked a crop and a zone.
- Membership plans: what the free tier covers and what Starter adds, including the full multi-month price history.
Try it now
Open /prices/tomato/, or head to the full A to Z list and pick whatever’s actually in your trolley this week. It costs nothing to check, and the growing guide is one free email away.
