Cheapest Vegetables to Grow Yourself as Grocery Prices Climb

Leafy greens, herbs, zucchini, and cut-and-come-again crops give the best dollar return per square metre against rising grocery prices, while bulk staples like potatoes, onions, and pumpkin are cheap to buy and space-hungry to grow — worth growing for food security, but a poor use of limited garden space if your goal is purely cutting the grocery bill.

Grocery price rises hit different vegetables very differently, and that matters for deciding what to actually plant if space, time, or water are limited. A vegetable that's cheap and abundant at the supermarket most of the year isn't worth much garden real estate compared to one that's expensive, short-seasoned, or prone to price spikes. Here's how to prioritise a small garden against what's actually happening to prices, rather than growing whatever looks good in a seed catalogue.

Why per-square-metre value is the right way to compare, not price per kilo

It's tempting to rank vegetables purely by their price per kilogram at the shop, but that misses the constraint that actually matters for most home gardeners — space. A crop that's cheap per kilo but produces an enormous yield from a small footprint can still be a better use of limited garden space than an expensive crop that takes up a lot of room for a modest harvest. This is why herbs dominate almost every version of this list: their per-kilo shop price looks moderate at first glance, but they're sold in tiny bunches, meaning the effective price per kilogram is often higher than premium cuts of meat, while a single plant occupies a fraction of a square metre. Reframing the comparison around space rather than weight changes which crops actually deserve priority in a limited garden.

The highest-value crops per square metre

Herbs top almost every list here, and it isn't close. A $4 bunch of basil or coriander from the supermarket typically contains less than 30g of usable leaf, while a single well-grown basil or coriander plant can produce many times that over a season for the cost of a seed packet. Leafy greens like silverbeet, kale, and lettuce are close behind — cut-and-come-again varieties keep producing for months from one planting, and a $4–$5 bag of salad leaves at the shop represents maybe 150g, easily matched by a few plants in a single harvest.

The crops that look cheap to grow but aren't worth the space

Potatoes, onions, garlic, and pumpkin are the classic examples of crops that are genuinely cheap to buy year-round and take up a disproportionate amount of bed space and growing time for their return. A pumpkin vine can sprawl across 4–6m² of garden for a handful of pumpkins that might cost $15–$25 at the shop — a poor trade if that space could instead grow $60 worth of tomatoes or greens in the same footprint. That doesn't mean skip them entirely — they're excellent for food storage and self-sufficiency goals, and if you've got a spare paddock corner or an area with poor soil that isn't suited to higher-value crops anyway, they're a sensible use of otherwise wasted space. The point is prioritisation when space is the limiting factor, not avoiding them altogether.

Fruit follows the same logic, with a longer payback

Berries are the standout fruit crop by the same value-per-space logic that applies to vegetables — raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries are consistently among the most expensive fresh produce per kilogram at the supermarket, and a handful of well-established plants can produce a meaningful punnet-equivalent harvest each week through the season for a fraction of the retail cost. Strawberries in particular are well suited to small spaces, including hanging baskets and vertical planters, and fruit within their first year from purchased runners. Citrus trees, while slower to establish (often two to three years before a meaningful harvest), eventually produce a large volume of fruit that's otherwise a recurring grocery cost every week of the season, making them a longer-term investment with a strong eventual return, particularly for lemons and limes given how often small quantities are bought fresh rather than in bulk. The trade-off with fruit generally is patience — most fruiting plants and trees take at least one full season, and often several, to reach a meaningful yield, which is a very different payback profile to annual vegetables that can produce within weeks of sowing.

What's actually happened to Australian vegetable prices

Fresh vegetable prices have risen faster than general inflation across much of the past few years, driven by a mix of rising input costs (fuel, fertiliser, and packaging), extreme weather events disrupting harvests, and labour costs in commercial growing. Leafy greens and herbs — the crops that are hardest to transport and store, and most reliant on fresh, local supply — tend to see the sharpest price spikes when a growing region is hit by flooding or heatwave damage, precisely because there's no buffer stock the way there is with a stored crop like onions or potatoes. That volatility is itself an argument for growing your own of exactly these crops: not just the average saving, but avoiding the $8-a-bunch price spikes that happen when a major growing region has a bad month.

Grow what you'll actually eat, not what's theoretically efficient

All of the value-per-square-metre logic above assumes you'll actually eat what you grow, and it's worth stating plainly that a garden full of theoretically high-value crops nobody in the household likes is worth nothing at all beyond the exercise. It's a common trap for new gardeners to plant based purely on cost-efficiency charts like the one above, end up with a glut of kale nobody wants to eat, and conclude gardening "doesn't save money" — when the actual problem was planning around theoretical value rather than household habits. Before committing bed space to any crop on the high-value list, check it's something your household already buys and eats regularly; a moderate saving on food you'll genuinely use beats a large theoretical saving on food that ends up in the compost.

Making a small space work harder

If space is genuinely limited — a balcony, a small courtyard bed, or a handful of large pots — lean almost entirely into the high-value list above and skip the space-hungry staples entirely. Vertical growing (trellised tomatoes, climbing beans and peas, vertically trained cucumbers) multiplies the yield you get from a small footprint, and succession planting leafy greens and herbs every few weeks keeps a constant harvest rather than one big glut followed by empty beds. The Planting Calendar will show you what to sow each month for your climate zone, and pairing it with the Harvest Calendar helps you plan succession sowing so something is always coming ready.

If you're deciding what to plant based on genuine cost impact rather than gut feel, the Yearly Food Self-Sufficiency Planner lets you set how often your household actually eats each vegetable and shows how much you'd need to grow to make a real dent in that specific grocery category, rather than growing a generic garden and hoping it lines up with what you actually cook.

The bottom line for a grocery-price-focused garden

If the goal is specifically fighting rising grocery prices rather than broad food security, put your limited space and water into herbs, leafy greens, tomatoes, zucchini, and climbing beans first — these are the crops where home growing beats the shop by the widest margin and where price volatility hits hardest. Treat bulk staples like potatoes and pumpkin as a secondary project for spare space once the high-value beds are sorted, not as a starting point.

Revisit the list each season too, since grocery prices don't move in a fixed pattern — a crop that was a moderate saving last year might become a much bigger one after a bad growing season for commercial suppliers, and vice versa. Keeping half an eye on which vegetables are currently expensive at your own regular shop is a reasonable, low-effort way to adjust next season's planting toward whatever's actually costing the most right now, rather than sticking rigidly to a list written at one point in time.

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