Brussels Sprout Season

Brussels sprouts are a cool-season winter vegetable, with peak supply in Australia between May and July. South Australia and Victoria carry most of the crop, and the shelves are well stocked from autumn through mid-winter. By late August supplies thin out. The season is shorter than it looks.

Brussels Sprouts are in season across winter and autumn in Australia, with peak supply from March to August.

Brussels sprouts are the slowest brassica to mature, typically taking six to nine months from transplanting to final harvest, according to the AUSVEG WA Farmnote. They're the same genus (Brassica oleracea) as cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli. Plants reach 100 to 140 cm, with the tight buds forming in the leaf axils as temperatures drop. In Australia seedlings go in during summer so the plant frame is established before the cold arrives, then sprouts are harvested progressively from the base upward, with a single plant yielding 50 to 80 sprouts over two to three months. Frost is believed to improve firmness and flavour, and the crop is a heavy feeder through its long growing season.

Brussels sprouts most likely originated in Belgium, where they were being cultivated commercially by at least the 13th century, descending from a wild coastal European ancestor. The crop arrived in Australia with European settlement and has always been a minor vegetable relative to its brassica cousins. Production is concentrated in the southern states. Modern commercial varieties are hybrid cultivars bred for uniformity, tight heads and disease resistance. Purple-tinged cultivars exist but are not widely grown commercially, according to the AUSVEG WA Farmnote.

The national crop reached 7,868 tonnes valued at $30.6 million in 2024/25, up from 3,634 tonnes in 2008-09, an increase of around 107 per cent in volume, according to AUSVEG Veggie Stats. Hort Innovation named brussels sprouts the fastest-growing vegetable in value in 2022/23, when production value jumped 53 per cent to $42.1 million and per capita consumption rose 46 per cent. Exports are modest. South Korea took 53.6 per cent of export value in 2014-15 and Japan 18.2 per cent, and fresh imports are negligible, so what's on the shelf is Australian-grown.