EIGHT-year-old Ezra Calabrese has his sights set on a big win, and an even bigger pumpkin, at this year’s Red Hill Show on 7 March.
The young Mornington Peninsula grower is nurturing a giant pumpkin that’s already measuring an impressive 500 millimetres in diameter – roughly the size of two basketballs side-by-side, and it’s still growing.
Ezra will enter the juniors’ largest vegetable category, hoping to go one better than last year when he proudly claimed second prize.
And he’s determined to claim first prize, dad Lee said.
Lee said they are a gardening family who grow a wide range of vegetables. For Ezra, it’s more than just a hobby, it’s a passion.
“I like picking and eating the fresh vegetables,” he said.
The pumpkin has been carefully tended and is being fed with an organic liquid fertiliser made right at home.
Two years ago, Lee quietly launched EE-SEA, an organic fertiliser business that turns ocean fish by-products into a high-analysis liquid fertiliser, the only product of its kind manufactured on the peninsula.
The family uses it across their garden, including on Ezra’s prize hopeful.
With the show just weeks away, the plan is simple: let the pumpkin grow as long as possible before show day and hope it reaches peak size in time for judging.
Win or lose, Ezra’s already proving that big things can grow from small seeds especially when a little patience and some family know-how are involved.
First published in the Mornington News – 24 February 2026
