5 ways to reuse Halloween pumpkins!

Hi greenthumbs!

Happy Halloween! If your family loves to celebrate Halloween you might be thinking of carving a pumpkin! Lots of families will be doing the same thing and putting a jack-o-lantern on their doorstep, especially in the Northern Hemisphere where Halloween is a big celebration!

But, have you ever wondered what happens to all those pumpkins afterwards?! It turns out that a lot of them end up in the bin! I think that’s just nuts because there are so many cool things you can do with pumpkins. Pumpkins rock!

Here are 5 ways that you can reuse and recycle your Halloween pumpkin.

Make a pumpkin planter. This is my favourite idea! You can fill your empty pumpkin with organic potting mix or compost and grow plants in it! If your pumpkin has a face on it, the plants will look like the hair!

Make soup! When you are carving out your pumpkin, you can save the flesh to make a yummy soup. Just make sure you do this BEFORE you use your jack-o-lantern. No one wants candle wax in their soup!

Save the pumpkin seeds (or eat them!). You could save your seeds to grow your own pumpkins for next season. You will need to scoop the seeds out, give them a wash, clean all of the stuff off them and let them dry out. If you want to eat them, you can roast them in the oven for a yummy snack attack.

Pop it in your compost. After you have finished with your jack-o-lantern, you can cut it up carefully and put it in your compost. After a while, the pumpkin will break down and turn into compost full of goodies and nutrients. You can mix this beautiful compost into your garden to help grow more pumpkins! Or, if you don’t have a compost, you can put it in your food and organics bin (if you have one)…that’s the one with the green lid!

Feed it to the worms or your chickens! If you have a worm farm, you can feed your pumpkin to your worms. You just need to cut it up nice and small for them to eat. Or, if you have chickens (or know someone with chickens!) you can sit the whole pumpkin on the ground for them to peck at. Just make sure you scoop out any candle wax first.

The chickens will LOVE this tasty pumpkin treat. And then your eggs will taste like pumpkin. Hahah, just kidding!! But that would be pretty cool wouldn’t it?!! Would you call them egg-kins…or pump-eggs?!!

So, that’s my 5 things that you can do with your pumpkin instead of throwing it in the bin.

scrapboy has asked me to tell you a joke he made up, so here it is.

What do pumpkins do when they rip their pants?

They sew on a pumpkin patch!

Hahah, that is pretty funny!

Happy Halloween greenthumbs!