Cabbage Season

Cabbage is available year-round in Australia, with peak supply through autumn and winter when the cool-season crop performs at its best. Queensland and Victoria together account for more than 60% of national production, and the geographic spread of growing regions, from the Lockyer Valley in Queensland down through Victoria's Werribee and Gippsland districts, means fresh heads reach the market in every month of the year.

Cabbage is in season year-round in Australia, with peak supply in winter.

Cabbage (Brassica oleracea var. capitata) is a cool-season annual that thrives at 15°C to 25°C. Above 30°C heads become loose and puffy, so growers select varieties rated for their region and season, as the DAF Qld Cabbage CTT report details. Most commercial crops are transplanted from protected nurseries, with new batches going in every week or ten days to keep supply continuous. Early varieties mature in around 70 days from transplanting. Late-season types can take 120 days, and delays in cutting cause heads to split as inner leaves keep expanding.

Cabbage was most likely domesticated in Europe before 1000 BC, with Dutch and German sailors later carrying pickled sauerkraut on long voyages to ward off scurvy. Seeds arrived in Australia with the First Fleet in 1788 and were planted the same year on Norfolk Island. By the 1830s cabbage was a staple at the Sydney Markets, according to Wikipedia. Today the main growing districts run down the eastern seaboard. The Lockyer Valley and Stanthorpe (QLD), Bathurst and Windsor (NSW), Werribee and Gippsland (VIC), and Manjimup and Gingin (WA) are the key areas. By state in 2024/25, Queensland leads at 31.5%, followed by Victoria (30.4%), NSW (26.0%), WA (8.8%), SA (2.9%) and Tasmania (0.5%), per Hort Innovation.

Australia produced 63,776 tonnes of cabbage worth $55.7 million in 2024/25, with around 83% going to the fresh market and the remainder to food service and processing. Production has run between 59,000 and 79,000 tonnes over the past decade. According to Hort Innovation, the 2022/23 crop returned $59.7 million at the farm gate, up sharply from $33.7 million on a similar volume two years earlier. Exports are modest at 467 tonnes ($2.0 million in 2024/25), with Singapore and Japan the main destinations, a pattern noted by AUSVEG Veggie Stats on Cabbage going back decades. Around 280 producers were growing across approximately 2,340 hectares in 2015/16.