What to Do With Your Pumpkins After Halloween

Compost them, bury them, or save the seed. Skip the woods, the ditch, and the deer. Here is what extension services say to do with pumpkins after the holi...

Published by ThriveThyme

pumpkins compost fall garden seed saving

The Short Answer

Compost it, bury it in a bed, or save the seed if the pumpkin was a keeper. Do not haul it to a park, a woodlot, or a roadside ditch. Illinois Extension calls dumping pumpkins in forest preserves or ditches littering, and notes it can be illegal. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources also does not recommend feeding pumpkins to wildlife.

A pumpkin is mostly water, so it breaks down fast once it is chopped and mixed with something dry. Whole pumpkins left on the surface rot slowly, smell, and draw animals. Cut them up, pull off anything that is not plant material, and either add them to a compost pile with dry leaves or bury the pieces in the garden.

Do Not Dump Them in Parks, Woods, or Ditches

It looks harmless. It is not.

Illinois Extension is direct about this: do not toss or leave pumpkins in forest preserves or ditches, because it counts as littering and can be illegal. A pumpkin on a park lawn is trash with a seasonal excuse.

There is a second problem that gets less attention. A dumped pumpkin concentrates animals in one spot, and concentrated animals spread disease. Illinois Extension lists damage complaints and the spread of disease, including chronic wasting disease in deer, as reasons the state wildlife agency does not recommend feeding pumpkins to wildlife.

Cornell Cooperative Extension of Orleans County adds a practical caution for anyone who quarters a pumpkin and leaves it out for wild animals. Make sure you are not creating a new problem by pulling wildlife across roads, into your best plantings, or into a habit of visiting your yard.

Why Feeding Deer Is a Bad Idea

In Illinois it is not just discouraged. Except for bird and squirrel feeders near a residence, Illinois law makes it illegal to put out food, salt, mineral blocks, or similar products for deer and other wildlife. Illinois Extension points out that concentrating animals at a food pile is one of the ways chronic wasting disease spreads.

There is a plant disease angle too. Illinois Extension notes that pumpkin debris can carry powdery mildew, which is one more reason not to scatter it where you grow cucurbits next year.

If you want to help wildlife in fall, leaves left on the ground do far more good. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service points out that fallen leaves provide habitat for butterflies, moths, salamanders, toads, turtles, and many other species.

Strip It Off First

Before anything goes in a pile or a hole, remove what is not plant:

Illinois Extension asks people to remove decorations, paint, and non-compostable materials before a pumpkin goes to a community compost event. Cornell says the same for home compost: remove paint, wax, or marker first. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service warns that a painted pumpkin can be toxic to wildlife that eats it, and that any product applied to a pumpkin should be used exactly as its label says.

A pumpkin washed with bleach should not go to farm animals. Illinois Extension notes bleach is toxic to them, and that a white vinegar solution is a safer wash but will not fix a pumpkin that is already molding.

Compost It

This is the easiest good option.

Illinois Extension describes pumpkins as cucurbits, water based crops that add excellent organic matter to a compost pile. Cornell notes the same thing from the other direction: because pumpkins have a high water content, they break down quite rapidly.

That speed cuts both ways. A wet, nitrogen rich mass in the middle of a pile goes sour and slows the whole batch. Treat pumpkin flesh as a green, the same as kitchen scraps or fresh grass clippings, and balance it with browns.

  1. Smash or chop the pumpkin into pieces. Smaller pieces break down faster.
  2. Mix the pieces into the pile instead of setting a whole pumpkin on top.
  3. Add roughly the same volume of dry leaves or straw, or a little more, so the wet flesh is buffered.
  4. Bury the pieces a few inches into the existing pile rather than leaving them exposed.
  5. Turn the pile as usual.

If you keep a bin and it is already full, burying in the garden is the next best thing. See our fall leaves guide for what to do with the browns.

Bury It in the Garden

This is trench composting, and a pumpkin is a good candidate for it.

Nebraska Extension describes the method: dig a hole or trench 12 to 15 inches deep, chop the material into small pieces, mix it with soil, and backfill with at least 8 inches of soil on top. No turning, no bin, no smell above ground. Decomposition takes anywhere from a month to a year depending on soil temperature, soil life, and what you buried.

University of Saskatchewan gives a slightly different set of numbers for the same method: a hole or trench 12 to 18 inches deep, at least 6 inches away from the nearest plants, filled with green material and covered with at least 6 to 8 inches of soil.

Either version works. The parts that matter are depth and distance from roots. Chopped pumpkin buried that deep does not attract animals to the surface.

A few cautions:

Save the Seed

You can, with two conditions.

The flesh has to be sound. A pumpkin that has been sitting carved and soft for a week is not a good seed source. Cornell's guidance is to rinse the seed, dry it completely, and store it cool and dry for spring.

The pumpkin should not be a hybrid you care about. Most jack-o-lantern types are hybrids, and squash and pumpkins cross with anything of the same species that bloomed nearby. The seed will sprout. It just may not grow the pumpkin you expected.

Our step by step guide covers the rest: how to save pumpkin and squash seeds.

A related note from Cornell: remove the seeds before you compost the pumpkin, or you will have a new pumpkin patch come spring. That is only a problem if you did not plan for it.

If It Is Still Good to Eat

An uncarved pumpkin that stayed clean indoors can still be cooked. Cornell gives one useful number: a six pound pumpkin yields about 2 and 3/4 cups of puree. The washed seeds can be roasted.

Once a pumpkin has been carved, sat outside, or started to soften, it belongs in the compost, not the kitchen.

Next Steps

  1. Pull the candles, wax, paint, glitter, and plastic out of every pumpkin on the porch.
  2. Smash or chop what is left.
  3. Compost the pieces with dry leaves, or bury them 12 to 15 inches deep in an empty bed and cover with at least 8 inches of soil.
  4. Skip the ditch, the park, and the woodlot. Illinois Extension counts that as littering.
  5. If a pumpkin was a healthy open-pollinated type, save the seed using the seed saving guide.
  6. Planning to store a squash or pumpkin instead of compost it? The Harvest Storage Desk has curing and storage conditions for each crop.

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