Love U long time Jack O’

There are a lot of myths about how to preserve pumpkins but few if any of them stand up to actual testing. Here and here you can check out pumpkin preservation tests carried out by pumpkin enthusiasts. Both groups tested vaseline, hair spray, commercial pumpkin cleaners, bleach and more. The end result? All the pumpkins rotted away but the ones that held out the longest were the ones treated with bleach.

If you want to preserve your pumpkin you need to do two critical things. You need to keep the pumpkin from drying out and you need to keep the pumpkin from developing mold. The best way to keep the pumpkin from molding is to kill the mold spores. After you initially carve your pumpkin give it a solid misting with a bleach-based spray like Clorox Cleanup with Bleach or mix your own mild bleach mixture at home. From there out, mist it daily with the bleach cleaner to kill off anything that might grow on it.

1 Tablespoon \ gal will work fine.

Now drag out some power tools and carve away!