Trading tips for gutting, transferring, and carving the real thing.
By Liderc
#5754
Well, since I seem to have done some experimenting with freezing pumpkins this year, I thought I'd gather my information and submit it here. I hope that others may benefit from my knowledge and mistakes.

Freezing Uncarved pumpkins:

I would advise against this, as Ryan mentioned pumpkins are made up of about 90% water. Freezing uncarved pumpkins will make the water cells expand and burst, causing the skin of the pumpkin to become a different texture which can hurt the outcome of your stencils.

Freezing Gutted pumpkins:

Doing this myself this year because of an itch to start about 10 days early on my pumpkins, I have found that this is something you DO NOT want to do. Gutting the pumpkin then freezing it will result in a mushy pumpkin within 3 to 4 days, depending on the pumpkin of course(I had one last about 7 days before showing any mushy exterior.)

Out of 4 of the pumpkins I gutted then froze, I lost one within a day, and 2 others began to go mushy within 3 days. The fourth one started to show a mushy exterior and mold on the 7th day.

I was able to carve 3 out of the 4 pumpkins frozen, some very good designs I must say, thanks to ZombiePumpkins. When they started to turn to mush, I thought about freezing them NOW that they were carved out, thinking that I could freeze the design until Halloween night, removing them, lightning them, and hoping they last the 4-6 hours of show time. To my suprise this worked almost flawlessly. I froze the pumpkins carved, took them out, and they looked almost exactly like they did when I first carved them, with very little distortion of the design.

In conclusion, if you get the carving itch as I did, and your pumpkins don't appear to be lasting until the special day, put them into a freezer, keep the lid off so that it doesn't freeze to the pumpkins, remove the pumpkin on Halloween, display the pumpkin until it completely thaws out, where it will then probably fall apart, but it sure will look nice for all your haunted visitors.

Disclaimer- I do not suggest freezing your uncarved pumpkin, it will definitely decrease the amount of time your pumpkin will stay healthy, but if it looks as if your pumpkin will not make it to Halloween, SAVE your beloved design and freeze it in time, so that you may share it on Halloween with everyone.
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By Dans banana Loafcake
#5766
Last year we had our kitchen redone and I kept the old fridge in the garage. This was perfect for storing carved and gutted pumpkins and keeping them fresh. I didn't really like the idea of freezing them cos like it says above, pumpkins are mostly water and we all know water expands.

Dan