Animal Crossing Pumpkins: How to grow pumpkins, pumpkin colours and how to use pumpkins in New Horizons explained
Create your own pumpkin patch!
Pumpkins can now be grown in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which means that you can have a pumpkin patch alongside your flower garden.
During your pumpkin farming experiment, you'll learn that there are four different pumpkin colours and each colour has a number of uses.
Pumpkins, alongside spooky furniture, are part of the Halloween event running throughout October every year in New Horizons.
On this page:
Where to buy pumpkin starts in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Before you can start growing pumpkins in New Horizons, you need to buy some pumpkin starts, which are what pumpkins are called in their first growth cycle.
You can purchase pumpkin starts from two places throughout October - Nook's Cranny and Leif.
At Nook's Cranny you can purchase one pumpkin start for 280 Bells and five for 1,400 Bells.
Leif, however, will give you a special deal throughout October only charging you 140 Bells for a single pumpkin start and 1,400 Bells for five.
Due to Leif cutting his pumpkin start prices in half we highly recommend waiting for him to visit your island, so that you can save Bells and still buy as many pumpkin starts as you like.
Since Leif is an island visitor you may find yourself waiting a couple of days for him to arrive on your island. If this is the case, check out our guide on the island visitor schedule to help you determine when he might visit next.
How to grow pumpkins and pumpkin colours in Animal Crossing: New Horizons explained
Growing pumpkins in New Horizons follows exactly the same method as growing flowers.
Once you've brought your pumpkin starts and decided where you want to plant them, open your inventory, select your pumpkin starts and choose the option 'Plant 1.'
The pumpkin start will then be planted in the ground and now it's up to you to water it!
It will take four days for your pumpkins to grow and, ideally, you'll want to water them every day to ensure that you receive a bigger harvest. Pumpkins will continue to grow without being watered, but you won't grow as many.
After you've picked your pumpkins you can continue watering the same pumpkin plant to grow more.
Every pumpkin you grow can be one of four different colours - orange, green, yellow and white - and there's no way to determine which colour you receive. Instead, you'll simply have to keep growing pumpkins until you have the colours you need.
No matter what its colour may be, make sure you keep every pumpkin that you collect, because, if you're planning on doing anything with the spooky furniture set, you're going to need all of the pumpkin colours.
The Animal Crossing 2.0 update and Happy Home Paradise is here! We can help you with the new additions - including where to find Brewster, Gyroids, new villagers, ordinances, new fences, storage shed, new hairstyles, Froggy Chair, group stretching and Kapp'n boat tours. Cooking is now unlockable, so you need to know how to make both flour and sugar, as well as how to grow carrots, potatoes and tomatoes. Meanwhile, if you're new to Animal Crossing, our New Horizons tips can help with the basics. From the off, there's fish and bugs to catch, flowers and fruit to grow with. One long term goal is building your Happy Home Academy score. Finally, you need tools such as the new ladder and vaulting pole to fully explore.
What are pumpkins used for in Animal Crossing: New Horizons?
Aside from being another plant you can decorate your island with in New Horizons, pumpkins do have a number of uses.
The first is that pumpkins are a main ingredient in the DIY recipes for spooky furniture. If you want to craft a section of spooky fence, for example, you'll need three orange pumpkins.
You'll also need a variety of pumpkin for customising spooky furniture, as the customisations you have available to you are determined by which pumpkin colours you have.
Good luck on growing pumpkins in New Horizons!