Excessive pumpkin waste

[CoolShoeshine]

It seems like people have forgotten that pumpkins are actually food. It is incredibly wasteful that so many are grown each year just to decorate houses. It used to be one or two pumpkins carved for fun, but now some people seem to have multiple pumpkins of all sizes and colours outside their house in a decorative pile. They look lovely but wouldn't it be better if the country's fields and farming resources were put to better use? I cant imagine any other foods being wasted in this way without an outcry!

Plenty of places near me will take leftover pumpkins (minus candles!) for their animals. Chill a bit.

Most pumpkins people carve aren't great for eating.

After Halloween, many people put them in woodlands for the critters that live there.

Decorative pumpkins (the ones used for carving) are forced to grow large and are tasteless. There's a difference between those and actual eating ones.

Yeah, me (and several other neighbours) gather all the village pumpkins (often 100 or so) and take them to several local farms. Not everyone wastes them!

I thought it was dangerous for some animals & we weren't supposed to do that?

This is a terrible thing to do because hedgehogs in particular can get very unwell eating pumpkins as they can't digest them. They get diarrhea which can be life-threatening for them. It's best not to put them out for wildlife.

Next door have and all the squirrels are having a feast.

I wish we could use them to cook with. They have no flesh in them unfortunately, grown just for carving. My father in law grew a huge one on his allotment one year, it was amazing, made a few pies from it too.

Agreed. Do NOT stick them in the woodlands. The seeds are very toxic.

Give them to farms or pop them in the food waste bin or compost them.

I just put out one and it’s been nicked! Maybe it was a gang of squirrels.

Really bad idea..many woodland trusts cite the reasons why this is bad practice for UK wild life.

Which make many of them really ill because they aren’t native and introduce moulds etc that harm ecosystems. Read up on what pumpkin can do to hedgehogs.

You can grow more pumpkins. Just like concrete

I always roast the seeds in olive oil. But stick to one pumpkin.

There’s a drop off point for pumpkins here for the zoo

On BBC news the capybaras were scoffing pumpkins
I offered a square to my guinea-pigs a few years ago and they deemed them dis-custing .
I don't buy the big ones as I don't like carving them .
But the smaller ones are nice sliced up , de seeded and the flesh roasted on the skin for soup .

I have a ceramic one that I put out every year.

But people leaving them in a pile outside their house are most likely also going to eat them after…??

i’m nit at all into Halloween - but how do you know whether they scooped the guts out and purred it and made it into food for themselves or pets?

then carved their faces etc???

don’t be so judgemental !

Someone on my local Facebook group if offering 10 to anyone who wants them, they've been standing outside her house uncarved. Who's going to want to eat them now?

I have a few ceramic and metal pumpkins I made myself which I use for décor and on Halloween I always make a pumpkin curry of some sort. I agree that it does seem a bit wasteful to see all the rotting pumpkins on doorsteps in November. I also can concur that most of the pumpkins you see carved are not great for eating either and are quite bland. It's also true that these pumpkins are at least biodegradable and kids have a lot of fun going to a pumpkin patch and carving a design on them so it's not the biggest evil in the world. Would a big plastic lantern that ended up in landfill not be worse? I think as long as the pumpkin is popped into food waste or an animal is able to eat it after then there is little harm done.

I don’t think the general idea is right- pumpkins will be grown as part of a rotation, not instead of other foods. And the impact on food supply is tiny.

its a fair point that they’re wasted, but they’re not really good to eat anyway

Animal places like zoos and farms etc will often take them.

Carving pumpkins are dry and stringy inside. An American friend tried to make a pumpkin pie from one but she’d never made one before and didn’t know pith isn’t flesh. It didn’t set and was generally horrible. I’d eat pumpkins if they were actually made for eating but I compost them as they are grown to be disposable like Christmas trees. It is wasteful but at least they provide an activity unlike plastic pumpkins

Most carving pumpkins don't make good eating. We're going to a pumpkin smash today and will make a donation to the food bank in return we get to see our pumpkins dropped from a crane and smooshed.