Harvesting Pumpkins in Animal Crossing: New Horizons: A Quick Guide

Halloween is just around the corner, and that means pumpkins are making their debut in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. With the latest Halloween update, players can now purchase pumpkin starts, which are seeds that can be planted to grow pumpkins. These pumpkins can be used as standalone decorations or saved up to craft various new DIY recipes for October, collectively known as the Spooky Set. Before diving deeper into the game, here’s everything you need to know about growing and harvesting pumpkins in New Horizons.

**Where to Buy Pumpkin Seeds/Starts**
You can snag pumpkin seeds from Nook’s Cranny throughout October. They’re located in the cabinet where you typically buy tools like fishing rods and watering cans. Each pumpkin start costs 280 bells. Alternatively, Leif offers pumpkin starts for just 140 bells and will continue to sell them year-round. He’s a special visitor, so he might show up once a week on a random weekday between 5 AM and 10 PM. Keep an eye out for his garden shop in your town square if you want to catch him.

**How to Plant and Grow Pumpkins**
Once you have your pumpkin seeds, planting them is just like any other plant in New Horizons. Stand on an empty patch of land or dig a hole with your shovel, open your inventory, and select the pumpkin starts. It takes four days for pumpkins to grow. The amount you water your pumpkin plants during this period affects how many pumpkins each plant produces. While watering isn’t necessary to yield at least one pumpkin, here’s the breakdown for maximizing your harvest:

– Never watered = 1 pumpkin
– Watered once = 2 pumpkins
– Watered every day = 3 pumpkins

After harvesting your pumpkins at the end of the four days, you won’t need to replant your seeds. The plant will keep producing pumpkins throughout October.

**How to Get Yellow, White, and Green Pumpkins**
In New Horizons, pumpkins come in four colors: orange, yellow, white, and green. Orange pumpkins are the most common, while yellow and white are less common, and green is the rarest. These color varieties are essential for customizing pumpkin DIY recipes from the Spooky Set. Unfortunately, the color you get is random, and there’s no known way to influence it while gardening, unlike hybrid flowers. To obtain new colors, you’ll need to plant more pumpkin seeds. If you have a designated pumpkin patch with limited space, you can dig up an orange pumpkin plant and replace it with a new seed, then wait four days to see what color it produces. For those who are detail-oriented, you could plant pumpkins outside your patch, wait for the desired color, and then replant them in your patch. However, this method can be quite time-consuming.

Another option for acquiring new pumpkin colors is to trade with friends. You can exchange pumpkins while visiting another player’s island or when hosting guests. You can even dig up a friend’s plant and replant it on your island—just be sure to ask for permission before disturbing someone else’s pumpkin patch!

**What to Do with Pumpkins**
Pumpkins serve as a Halloween-themed resource for crafting various DIY recipes from the Spooky Set. These include items like a jack-o-lantern (known as the spooky lantern), a scarecrow, and even a candy set for trick-or-treaters.