Some people are really into fall and start their spooky season rituals in September. I don’t relate to those people—I prefer to squeeze the last morsels of summer and pretend fall doesn’t exist until Halloween—but to each their own.
The problem with starting the celebrations too early is that a major autumn mainstay, the humble pumpkin, is really just a fruit—and fruit gets old and ugly. If you carve too early, that jack-o’-lantern you carved weeks prior will look nasty by the the time Halloween rolls around. Here’s a quick guide to help you properly time your pumpkin carving to make sure those little cuties stay looking fresh, at least until after Halloween is over.
Pumpkin and jack-o’-lantern shelf (or stoop) life
One nice thing about pumpkins, when compared to other vegetation, is that they do last quite a while if you don’t hack into them. If stored in a cool, dark place, they can last about two months. If you’re using your pumpkins to make food, you can safely store them on your countertop for a few weeks with no issues. Only refrigerate them if you’ve cut them up into chunks. Think of them like avocados that way. The degradation only kicks in once you mess with them.
Similarly, if you want to decorate with your pumpkins, you can set them on your stoop, hearth, or whatever for a few weeks in early October and then carve them later. That’s what my family always used to do. The same pumpkins that adorned our stoop in their whole forms at the beginning of the season were the ones that reappeared all carved up closer to Halloween. Granted, we lived in a cooler climate, so if you live somewhere where fall is still really warm, this might not work. A pumpkin does best between 50 and 55°F and with little humidity.
Smaller pumpkins last longer and you can extend their life by bathing them in cool water and spritzing them with vinegar when you get them home.
When should you really carve your jack-o’-lantern?
If you’ve carved a pumpkin before, you know that you have about a week, tops, to enjoy it. There are ways to preserve it and give it a few extra days of looking nice, like carving from the bottom to maintain the integrity of the stem and using diluted bleach to wipe down the exposed edges, but these are not long-term solutions.
To maximize the life of your carved pumpkin, make sure it’s big, fresh, and unblemished, then carve it two or three days before you need it, at most. Realistically, if you want your jack-o’-lantern to look good on Oct. 31, carve it on Oct. 30. If you need jack-o’-lanterns in the weeks before Halloween, consider getting smaller ones and saving the biggest ones for the big day.