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!

They can be composted. I can't get wound up about pumpkins.

We all feed them to pigs and chickens: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c933xl0kvdrxo

Pumpkin pie is usually made from butternut squash because most pumpkin is disgusting 😂

Just wait till OP finds out about Xmas trees!

Pointless vegetables, IMO. Worse than sweetcorn.

yeah that is not a good idea.
https://www.forestryengland.uk/news/dumping-pumpkins-the-woods-bad-wildlife-warns-forestry-england-expert

Why is it that people get their knickers in a knot about pumpkins, which, while edible, are not grown as food but as decoration? The types that are used for decoration grow quickly, are very watery and tasteless and have very little internal flesh. No one moans about cut flower growers or bulb fields. Oh yeah and as @faithfultoGeorgeMichael says, christmas trees!

The way farming is in this country, I bet those “pumpkin patches” keep farmers going half the year now!

We used to give them to a farmer for his cows. Now that I live abroad I gradually cull them by hacking them into chunks and putting them out for the wildlife. Last night I checked and found a small posse of raccoons scoffing them down. I was delighted as I had no idea they’d eat pumpkins!

@Cora0 Trash pandas eat anything and everything. I hate the little fuckers !

I agree with you OP, which is why twenty years or so ago I bought some ceramic ones (one big one and some smaller hanging ones) and they are reused every year.

I cant cope with the moany posts in here. Its halloween. People buy and decorate with pumpkins. They arent good to eat. They tast awful.

I’m not sure the ones grown for Halloween are that edible.

My mum tried to cook one once and it was horrible.

She usually loves squashy vegetables.

I get the discomfort with the potential food waste; however, there is plenty of farm and field resources going to decorative plants rather than edible and there is a lot of other food waste going on all year-round that doesn't cause much outrage. Pumpkins may be very visible at this time of year, but they're not alone in this.

Don't get me started on Christmas trees! 😂

Mumsnet loves a good rant about Hallowe'en:

The plastic tat going to landfill!
Children begging!
It's an American import!
It's not "trick or treating", it's "guising"!
It's now a whole season, not just one day!
Real candles in pumpkins, which set the kids' costumes on fire!
They wear out the batteries in my Ring doorbell!
The little shits knocking don't follow the pumpkin code, and they make my dog go mad!
People miss out the apostrophe in Hallowe'en!
I just love saying "I hate Hallowe'en" because of the alliteration!

And think of all those donkeys being killed, so we can carve pumpkins! (From the fairy tale "The Donkey's Egg", about a farmer selling a pumpkin to a man, telling him that it's a donkey's egg. When the egg doesn't hatch, the man throws it away; it breaks in two, and disturbs a hare in a field, and he thinks it's the baby donkey.)

Or Rats....

I’ve got 8 different types of squash/pumpkin on my door step (not just for Halloween, more of an autumn display). We bought them from a farm, after also paying an entry fee and for food and attractions whilst there. This helps to fund the farm, a local business.
There are plenty of other things to get worked up over.

It will be xmas soon
I do love a competative who can spend the least on their children at xmas thread
Or the i wont be lying to my children about Father Xmas thread
Or it never used to be Santa Claus it was Father Xmas thread
And of course the obigatory mountains of plastic Tat thread
Not forgetting people wanting to put their xmas tree right about now and taking it all down on Boxing day and declaring xmas over thread

Better real pumpkins that plastic tat that is bought fresh every year.

I must be in the minority because I really like pumpkin soup😱

The point is we’re wasting resources growing inedible crops that are used for a week and then get chucked away.

I think they look lovely but I don’t buy them myself because it feels wasteful (I also don’t like cut flowers, as someone else mentioned it!).

It’s obviously a bit of fun, but that’s just me.

Can guinea pigs have them? I didn’t think they could?

We don’t do pumpkins but people at work give us the ones that their children have carved for our chickens.

Then dont buy them and move on.

I feel the same way, OP, and am a bit bah humbug about Halloween in general. I do buy a couple of pumpkins for my DC to carve, but I buy the culinary ones and make soup out of the flesh (although it's very difficult to remove the flesh without damaging the yet-to-be-carved shell, I find). However, the culinary pumpkins are rather small and unimpressive!

There are about 14 million kids in the UK today and if even half of them get a pumpkin, that's seven million - the majority of which will be the inedible carving kind, or else the small pretty ones that are edible in theory but in practice usually just dumped. They would need around 2,800 acres of farmland to grow them, which is the equivalent to 2,000 football pitches! And then there's the question of what to do with all these pumpkins, many of which seem to end up going mouldy in the woods and parks near me. It all seems such a waste, considering that these pumpkins give just a few hours pleasure. I think the land would be better utilised for growing actual food.

DP's spicy roasted pumpkin soup with chilli seeds was perfectly nice on Saturday and with the reduced ones this morning, they'll keep well on the windowsill until he can make some Japanese style dishes as well.

One Jack o'Lantern provided seeds, the rest are fine for meals. I'm not bothered by one composting (no hedgehogs in the town centre anyhow).

What do you mean? Pumpkins can be stored for ages, usually through the whole of winter. Standing outside (uncarved) for a day or two does not mean they can't be eaten.