TOMATO SCHOOL

Join Bec and Casey of Hen Dog at Aruna Estate, Penrose, for an immersive five-hour educational workshop and culinary experience where the focus is all things tomato! Casey has been growing rare and unique varieties of heirloom tomatoes for over a decade, and Bec has been creating delicious tomato-based snacks, suppers, and meals with them for even longer.

Our (tomato)jam-packed day is broken into two parts: LEARN and EAT

During LEARN, we will work through our in-depth coursebook. We want to set you up for success with tomato growing from seed to fruit, so our coursebook is crammed full of well-researched information, not just pretty pictures, and no AI! We will cover everything from tomato botany, culinary history, types of tomatoes, sourcing seed, growing from seed, soil, planting, spacing, companion planting, watering, trellising, pruning, harvesting, storing and using your harvest, and seed saving. Our hands-on practical will see you sowing tomato seeds, pricking out and potting up tomato seedlings, pruning and tying up tomato vines, harvesting tomatoes, and saving tomato seeds.

Rest assured, there will be ample brain-breaks during LEARN, including a tour of the farm and our tomato-growing areas, and tomato-based snacks and drinks.

After filling our brains with tomato-growing wisdom, it's time to fill our bellies with EAT! Here, Bec will take over with the culinary side of tomatoes, with taste testing, freshly prepared tomato pizzas, and a guided cooking experience.

All participants take home a premium Hen Dog goodie bag that includes a calico bag, your Tomato School coursebook, harvest snips, tomato seed packets for some of our favourite varieties, a gardner's notebook, and our house-made tomato preserve.

Penrose is located in the NSW Southern Highlands, just 1.5 hours from Sydney, Canberra, and Wollongong. Join us for the day, or make a weekend of it with one of the many nearby accommodation options on offer.

Meet the Hen Dog team:

Black Hen Kitchen is a love letter to a childhood spent around kitchen tables and simple, seasonal food. Growing up in the thick of inner western Sydney and surrounded by Yiayia’s, Nonna’s and Teta’s, Bec always had an inkling she would end up in food. Moving to the Southern Highlands in 2018 with no practical way to apply a career in law, she decided to put her fine arts degree to some use and Black Hen Kitchen was born. Bec is always pulled back to her childhood and the neighbourhood kitchens she grew up in. Using the same uncomplicated philosophy towards food, she has spent the last eight years cooking for celebrities, royalty, family and friends.

Casey has been (obsessively) growing heirloom veg since 2017 when she and her family moved to the Southern Villages. With a background in botanical science and teaching students at a university level, she decided to hang up her academia hat in 2023 starting Three Dogs Flower Farm. Casey cannot wait to grow heirloom veggies, and flowers of course, on a much larger scale with Hen Dog!