Pumpkin Topiary Beard Growth

Happy October everyone! I can't believe it's October. Crazy. Time is getting away from me (which you've seen on here my last 3 days of posting...I've failed on my 2 a day posting schedule and only got one post up. My apologies). 

With October here we can officially decorate for Fall and Halloween without too many weird looks.     I personally have not decorated yet because that means I have to clean my house...maybe there's a pin for that. ;) Kara decided to get in the fall mood and put together a project she found on Pinterest. 

The Original Pin

The link Kara followed was this page: http://www.decorating-ideas-made-easy-blog.com/2012/07/how-to-make-pumpkin-topiary.html?m=1

But the full tutorial (which Kara didn't actually see until all was said and done) is found here:
http://www.decorating-ideas-made-easy.com/fall-pumpkin-topiary.html

She saw this, went and bought her pumpkins, stabbed the wooden rod through and made her cute fall topiary. Kara got the pumpkin tower put together and then she "was going to buy a nice bow and some fall decor for base but before [she] could the top pumpkin developed a nasty disease!"

The Pinstrosity 

"They don't tell you pumpkins can grow a nasty brown furry fungus on them after only a few days of shoving a rod through the middle of them to hold them together."

Ew...not so pretty. She could have drawn a face on that top pumpkin and had a dwarf with a beard that would grow daily. I don't think that's quite the look she was going for though. 

What went wrong here? Kara went back and looked closely at the original source to find this line: "Craft stores have now come out with carve-able pumpkins."

I'm not going to lie...I was a little confused. Aren't just about all pumpkins carve-able? I remember buying our Halloween pumpkins as a kid at Hobby Lobby...those were carve-able. So I googled craft carving pumpkins and discovered what the original post was talking about. Hollow foam pumpkins that you can carve! 

http://www.michaels.com/Craft-Pumpkins-at-Michaels/ae0033,default,pg.html

According to the Michael's website, "Craft pumpkins are hollow inside, which makes them ideal containers for floral arrangements. Just cut a hole in the top or side, glue a brick of floral foam inside and you're ready do go. Craft pumpkins can be carved just like the real thing. The interior foam is the same color as a fresh pumpkin, so the effect is very realistic. Craft pumpkins can be painted with regular acrylic paints."

That would explain why Kara's pumpkin grew the nasty mold and the pumpkins in the original post did not. Fake pumpkins are the answer here if you want a topiary that will last all season long. If you just want a topiary like this one for Halloween as the trick-or-treaters come around you can put one together with real pumpkins that day or the day before...but don't expect it to last too long and to not grow a beard.

If you do use real pumpkins, here's a great link about trying to make your pumpkin last longer (they tested out a number of different methods): http://www.myscienceproject.org/pumpkin.html