How to Get Pumpkins in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

The way in which you get pumpkins, how to grow them, how many colors there are, and what they’re used for in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

October is here and what says October better than growing pumpkins in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

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If you’re looking to create your very own pumpkin patch but don’t know how to get pumpkins, or you’re wondering what pumpkins are used for, you’ve come to the right place. Below, we’ll walk you through how to get pumpkins in Animal Crossing: New Horizons! 

How to Get Pumpkins in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

To answer the first question you might have, you can get pumpkins in Animal Crossing: New Horizons one of two ways. First, you can purchase Pumpkin Starts from Nook’s Cranny. Second, you can purchase Pumpkin Starts from Leif.

Once you have Pumpkin Starts in your inventory, you’ll need to find a good place to plant them. Like flowers, you can plant your pumpkins by digging a hole, selecting the Pumpkin Starts in your inventory, then choosing the “Plant 1” option. 

You won’t know what color pumpkin each Pumpkin Start is until it’s done growing. In total, there are four different pumpkin colors you can grow: orange, white, yellow, and green.

While planting a pumpkin patch is fun, and the pumpkins themselves are really cute, you may be wondering what they’re intended for. The answer is DIY Recipes.

During the month of October, you can craft special “Spooky” DIY Recipes using regular crafting materials like Wood and Iron along with your freshly harvested pumpkins.

Below, we’ve listed a few DIY Recipes that you may encounter in October as examples.

  • Spooky Lantern – 4 Weeds, 4 Orange Pumpkins
  • Spooky Scarecrow – 4 Wood, 3 Orange Pumpkins
  • Spooky Fence – 5 Iron, 3 Orange Pumpkins
  • Spooky Tower – 7 Orange Pumpkins

To get these special DIY Recipes, you’ll need to proactively do things like shoot down balloons, trespass (we mean visit) the homes of all your Villagers and see if they’re crafting anything, and collect Message Bottles on the beach.

Note that these bottles spawn twice daily, once in the morning, and a second time at night. You can also find these bottles on Mystery Islands.

The more active you are, the more DIY Recipes you’ll find. You can also purchase a number of these items from Nook’s Cranny which has one festive item available for purchase each day.

To quickly recap, you can get pumpkins by purchasing Pumpkin Starts from Nook’s Cranny or Leif.

You’ll need to plant them and then wait a few days for them to grow to find out what color they are. There are four possible colors: orange, white, yellow, and green.

You’ll need pumpkins for DIY Recipes in October. You can also plant pumpkins for fun, like creating your very own pumpkin patch. Whatever you choose to do with your pumpkins in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is entirely up to you. 

Related: Animal Crossing New Horizons Will Get Halloween Update On September 30 

Now that you know how to get pumpkins in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, all of the pumpkin colors, and what they’re used for, we have a few other Animal Crossing guides we think you’ll find useful including: 


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Morgan Shaver
Morgan is a writer, metalhead, horror lover, and indie game enthusiast. When it comes to games, they love nothing more than to wax poetic about all the latest and greatest indies to anyone who'll listen. They're also a Tetris fanatic who's fiercely competitive in games like Tetris 99... and all games in general. But mostly Tetris. You can follow Morgan on Twitter @Author_MShaver