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Hey, guys.
My name is Nick Volesky, with the Utah State University
Extensions Integrated Pest Management Program.
So we're in Halloween season.
And carving pumpkins is a super fun activity
that comes in all levels of skill,
from easy to hard, and just different levels of difficulty.
So carving pumpkins is fun.
But eventually our carved creations
can start to rot and mold, and I'm
going to tell you guys how you can prevent that
and why that happens to begin with.
So molds are tiny micro-fungal organisms
that have the ability to live anywhere.
They release tiny lightweight spores
that can move through the air and look
for living organic matter, like our pumpkins, to live
and grow on.
So these molds within our Jack-O-Lanterns,
they can range from black to white to gray
and they can have a fuzzy appearance.
And they can cause our Jack-O-Lanterns
to shrivel and shrink and become distorted like this.
So consider these methods when you're carving your pumpkin
to help preserve it.
Before you cut into your pumpkin,
make sure it's clean and sterilized.
Also make sure the knife, the saw,
or the scoop you're using, whether it's in your kitchen
or a kit you buy is sanitized before you
cut into the pumpkin.
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So when you're cleaning out your pumpkin,
you want to do your best to remove all of the inside.
This will help reduce the surface area
for possible mold and fungal growth.
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So one of the best ways to preserve the pumpkin
is to dip it into a pool of water
with a 10% bleach solution.
And what this does is it will kill any spores
or microorganisms that are on the pumpkin
and help prevent new ones from forming.
So I usually leave it in there for about 10 minutes or so.
Some people leave it longer or shorter.
It just depends.
Another option is to have a spray
bottle of bleach just to spray on the pumpkin
when you're done.
So when we want to light our Jack-O-Lanterns up,
it's better to use like an electric light or glow stick
instead of a candle.
Candles are cool, but what that does
is it causes this pumpkin to almost cook
on the inside, which can again make
it more susceptible to mold.
So I wanted to see how well these methods really work.
So two weeks ago, I carved six pumpkins.
Three of them were outdoors for those two weeks,
and the other three were indoors during the two weeks.
And for each side, I had one pumpkin
that didn't have any treatment, I
had one pumpkin that did the bleach solution I just
showed you, and then one set of the pumpkins
had the petroleum jelly.
So I'm going to show you guys the results of those now.
So the most successful pumpkin that I found
was the one that we kept indoors and also treated
with the bleach solution.
This one, you can see, has very minimal mold growth,
and it still has pretty good shape and form.
Just a little bit of shrinkage.
This one didn't fare as well.
This was our indoor pumpkin and it didn't have any treatment.
So you can see there's a little bit of rot going on, especially
on the inside.
We got some mold growth and a lot
of shrinkage, especially on the carved part.
The next one was our indoor pumpkin
which was treated with petroleum jelly.
And the petroleum jelly did an excellent job
of sealing it and keeping the moisture in, but because
of that excess moisture there is a lot of rot happening.
So you can see a lot of mold growth
here, and especially on the inside where we had the most
mold growth overall.
So for the outdoor pumpkins, they didn't do as well.
The pumpkin that was treated with petroleum jelly,
again, did a good job of sealing the moisture in, but because
of that it allowed for a lot of growth.
Another problem with the outdoor pumpkins
is when the weather freezes, that causes the pumpkin
to freeze, and then it thaws out the next day, which
can be really destructive to the flesh.
The pumpkin that was treated with bleach
lasted a little bit longer with minimal mold growth,
but, again, the weather caused the pumpkin
to shrink a lot faster compared to the indoor one.
Finally, the control pumpkin without any treatment
had a lot of mold growth and shrunk probably the most.
So these are representative samples
of the different mold growth we had on all the Jack-O-Lanterns.
There's a lot of interior molds, but some of the most
common families include cladosporium, penicillium,
aspergillosis, alteneria, fusarium, rhizopus,
mucor,, trichoderma, and then lastly, didymella bryoniae,
which is the fungus that causes the gummy stem
blight disease that we see in our commercial pumpkin fields.
If you guys have any questions on molds and mildew,
check out our Utah [INAUDIBLE] fact-sheets
on information about them and your interior living
environments and just how to safely handle them.
And if you guys have any further questions,
you can feel free to contact our lab
through USU Extension, The Utah Plant Pest Diagnostic Lab.
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