Why I built this

If you have ever planted lettuce in a Brisbane October because the seed packet said “spring”, you know what is wrong with most gardening advice. The packets are written for the UK. The apps are built for the US. The YouTube tutorials assume frost dates that do not apply to Sydney, let alone Townsville.

I started by tracking supermarket vegetable prices for my own household. Then I noticed that nobody had combined live shop prices with proper Australian climate-zone planting guides. So I built the thing.

What makes it different

Three things, all of which I built, that nobody else has put in one place:

1. Live supermarket vegetable prices, updated daily from Woolworths, Coles, Aldi and IGA, normalised to a per-kilogram price you can actually compare.
2. Proper Australian climate-zone planting guides, 100+ crops grown across seven distinct climate zones, with month-by-month planting windows that work.
3. The Gardener Weekly Digest, personalised for your postcode, what to plant this month, what pests are pressure-high in your zone this week, and where prices are trending. Free with an account.

How I built it

The prices you see are not guesses. Every night an automated price collector reads what Woolworths, Coles, Aldi and IGA have published on their own websites, pulls the vegetable lines, and works out a per-kilogram figure for each one. A 100 g basil pack and a 1 kg bag of carrots get put on the same footing, so the comparison is honest.

I run a daily average with the worst outliers stripped out, because supermarket sites mis-tag products more often than you would think, a herb pack listed by the gram throws a per-kilo number that looks mad. Right now that gives 76 vegetables across the four retailers, priced in plain Australian dollars per kilo. The planting side covers 101 crops across the seven Australian climate zones, with month-by-month windows that match where you actually live, not Devon or Ohio.

It is one person, one set of servers in Australia, and a lot of evenings. No venture money, no overseas data brokers, nothing sent to OpenAI. If a price looks wrong, email me and I will check the mapping the same day.

Where it is up to

Garden Buddy AU went live in April 2026 and gets built out in the open. The rough plan:

• Phase 1, Data (done). Daily price compilation across the four retailers, with a 12-month history building up behind it.
• Phase 2, Guides (done). Climate-zone planting guides for 101 crops across seven zones, plus the Plant Now tool.
• Phase 3, Member tools (live and growing). The My Garden journal, ROI report, care log and the Gardener Weekly Digest. This is where most of the work goes now.
• Phase 4, Buddy Check photo pest ID (shipped 2026). Live now on the Pro plan. Snap a sick plant and get it identified against an Australian pest and disease database, 20 checks a month, processed on hardware I own here, never sent overseas.

Pricing

Garden Buddy AU has three tiers:

• Free, today’s prices, the guides, the Plant Now tool, the 3-month price trend chart, the Gardener Weekly Digest and Weekly Price Alert emails, and a small journal (1 bed, 3 plants).
• Starter ($3.99 a month or $29 a year), the full 12-month price history, price-drop alerts for the crops you grow, a pick-your-crops watchlist, an unlimited journal with care and harvest logs, and CSV export.
• Pro ($7.99 a month or $59 a year), everything in Starter, plus Buddy Check photo pest ID, live pest pressure for your postcode including QLD fruit fly, weather-triggered pest alerts, the succession planting planner, and the Monthly Vegetable Price Report email.

Paid plans are charged when you sign up. Cancel anytime in one click, annual plans get a prorated refund on the unused months, so you can try it for a month or two and walk away if it’s not for you.

Legal

Garden Buddy AU is operated by HELP4BIS (ABN 86 081 237 087), a small Australian software company based in Dayboro, Queensland. GST registered, fully Australian-owned. All infrastructure, plant data, price monitoring, AI models, runs on hardware based in Australia.