I (Litsa) will never forget the smell of rotten pumpkins in my second grade classroom. It was a Saturday. The fall festival was scheduled at our school. I had stopped in to visit with students and parents but found more work in my classroom. The pumpkins that were lined up in the window had found warmth from the sunlight and they were rotting!
Yuck!!!
Recently, I was walking down a local street in town. Five little carved pumpkins were lined up. I counted the days before Halloween. Too many…
Insert warm weather in West Tennessee…….
On garbage pick up day, I saw five carved pumpkins trashed.
I can only imagine that they began to rot in the heat.
If you take time for these two easy steps immediately after bringing home your pumpkins from the pumpkin patch and/or grocery store, you may prevent rot before you are ready to toss your pumpkins.
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Select pumpkins with an even orange color over the entire rind and those with a short piece of stem still attached. Avoid pumpkins with soft spots or thin, weak rinds. Sunken sides or water-soaked spots also indicate a sub-par fruit that’s prone to rot.
- 2 Mix 1 tbsp. of bleach into a gallon of water. Next, dampen a cloth in the bleach mixture and wipe down the entire shell of the pumpkin. The bleach kills any bacteria or fungal spores on the rind (preventing premature rot).
You may also want to keep your pumpkins out of direct sunlight! And if your pumpkins are displayed outside, check the bottom of the pumpkins periodically and/or elevate the pumpkins off the ground so that air circulation can prevent moisture build up (note the crates at pumpkin patches)!
With these few tips, maybe our pumpkins will be the prettiest this season! That is if they survive the squirrel’s gnawing teeth…
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