Mine don't get nearly that big, but I grow them every 3 years or so to make bird houses out of the ones that are suitable bottoms with a good neck on them. i just dry them, take a razor knife to create a doorway, get the dried guts out, and bind them with cord and hang them about. The others I just pile up and eventually harvest the seeds or put them out as decor around Halloween through Christmas and compost. Never really had a mold issue with them. I usually leave them on the vine until dead to maximize size and toss the early departures in one of the many vacant hanging baskets I usually have about. I get every cheap plastic hanging basket I can get my hands on to use as pots for pass-along plants. Often they are former fern pots put out by roadsides in the fall.
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