By Eric Belgau
George Mollas, the owner of George and Sons Fruit Market, is passionate about great produce. It’s what led him to start the market four years ago, and it’s what drives him to buy great local food from great local farmers for his customers. When he talks about it, his eyes light up and his hands gesture in that charmingly animated style of his native Greece.
So when he saw an unusually large pumpkin growing in his neighbor’s yard, he was naturally intrigued. As the pumpkin grew, so did his interest.
When he asked about it, he learned that his neighbor had planted the pumpkin in early May, naming it after his brother, Rex, who had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. Although Rex sadly passed away, the eponymous pumpkin continued to swell in size through the summer and into the early fall.
Today, it’s a whopping 800 pounds. (For those of you looking forward to Thanksgiving desserts, that equates to about 267 pies using this recipe from the Food Network.)
The Mollas family was also touched by cancer four years ago. “He’s okay,” George said of his son, crossing his fingers and waving them in the air, “but it makes you want to do something.” So they decided to make Rex the pumpkin as meaningful as possible.
It was no easy task to move an 800-pound squash from the Tanglewild neighborhood to the market, but with the whole family helping, they managed to lift it into a truck. Now, it’s on display at George and Sons Fruit Market with a large sign encouraging visitors to snap pictures or take selfies with it. With proper care, it should stay fresh into late November or early December. And when it starts to break down, George will take out the seeds, cure them, and sell them for $1 each.
All the proceeds from the seed sales will benefit Relay for Life of Thurston County to support efforts to increase early detection rates, raise awareness, and create better treatments.
The effort is in keeping with the way the Mollas family runs the market, which has become an institution at its Lilly Road location. “We want to be as local as we can be,” George told me. “Food is part of the community. The more we get from local farmers, the more local farmers we’ll have in our community.” Or, more generally, the more we give, the more we’ll have. Creating an opportunity to give to the fight against cancer is just one more way to be a part of the fabric of the community.
Exactly how much money the giant pumpkin will raise remains a mystery. “We don’t know how many seeds there will be,” George said, “but we hope there will be a lot!”
Of course, using a seed from a giant pumpkin doesn’t guarantee you’ll have your own backyard behemoth. Good soil is also important, since a giant-variety pumpkin will require a whole lot of nutrients to achieve an enormous size. The National Gardening Association recommends amending the soil with plenty of organic matter – two to five yards per plant of compost and rotted manure. The soil pH, if you’re into that sort of thing, should be between 6.5 and 6.8.
But our climate is good for pumpkin growing, and with good soil and plenty of water, the seeds from Rex the pumpkin should grow some super-sized squash next year. They may not break world records (according to Guiness World Records the heaviest pumpkin is over 2,300 pounds), but the seeds should yield impressive jack-o-lanterns and more pies than any of us could (or probably should) ever eat.
In the meantime, the pumpkin stands ready to impress – and to pose for a picture.
Visit Rex at George and Sons Fruit Market at 427 Lilly Road SE in Olympia.
Hours: Monday – Friday from 9:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday from 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
