How To Get Pumpkins In Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Halloween is coming up and that means pumpkins are now available in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. As part of its latest Halloween update, New Horizons has made pumpkin starts available to purchase. These seeds can be planted and the resulting pumpkins harvested as a resource. You can place pumpkins as decorations on their own or save them up to craft some of the new October pumpkin DIY recipes, also called the Spooky Set.

Here's everything you need to know about growing and harvesting pumpkins in New Horizons.

Where To Buy Pumpkin Seeds/Starts

You can purchase pumpkin seeds from Nook's Cranny during the month of October. They are available in the cabinet where you usually purchase tools like fishing rods and watering cans. Seeds (called pumpkin starts) cost 280 bells each.

Leif also sells pumpkin starts for just 140 bells, and will continue selling them year-round. He is a special visitor, meaning he has a chance of showing up once per week on a random weekday, between 5 AM to 10 PM. Just be on the lookout in your town square for his garden shop if you want to see if he's there.

How To Plant And Grow Pumpkins

Once you have pumpkin seeds, you can plant them just like you would any other plant in New Horizons--stand on an empty patch of land or dig a hole with your shovel, bring up your inventory, and select the pumpkin starts.

It takes four days to grow a pumpkin. The frequency you water your pumpkin plants over this four day period will determine how many pumpkins each plant yields. Watering your plants is not required to grow at least one pumpkin each, but if you want the most bountiful harvest, here's how many times you should be watering your pumpkins:

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

Once you harvest your pumpkins at the end of the four days, you don't need to worry about replanting your seeds. The plant will continue producing pumpkins throughout October.

How To Get Yellow, White, And Green Pumpkins

Pumpkins come in four color varieties in New Horizons: orange, yellow, white, and green. Orange pumpkins are the most common variety. The less common yellow and white varieties and the rare green variety are required if you want to customize pumpkin DIY recipes from the Spooky Set. Unfortunately, these color varieties are completely random, and we're not aware of any way to manipulate them while gardening, unlike the more customizable hybrid flowers.

The only way to get a new color variety is to plant more pumpkin seeds. If you've sectioned off part of your island as a pumpkin patch and have limited space to plant them, you could dig up an orange pumpkin plant and replace it with a new pumpkin start, then wait the four days to see what color pumpkin it produces. If you're super meticulous, you could also plant pumpkins outside your patch, wait to get the color variety you want, then dig them up and replant them in your patch in the color configuration you want. In any case, forcing new color varieties will prove time consuming.

Another way to get new pumpkin colors is to trade with friends. You can swap pumpkins when visiting another player's island or hosting a guest on your own, if they bring some. You can even dig up a friend's plant and replant on your own island--though we recommend asking their permission before turning over a host island's pumpkin patch!

What To Do With Pumpkins

Pumpkins are a Halloween-themed resource you can use to craft pumpkin DIY recipes from the Spooky Set. These include a jack-o-lantern (called the spooky lantern), a scarecrow, and even a candy set for trick-or-treaters.

Find the full list of pumpkin DIY recipes and where to get them in our guide.