What to do with Pumpkins after Halloween (and a Pumpkin Recipe!)
By Steven Biggs
Cook Your Halloween Pumpkins
The smell of freshly carved pumpkin is a memory trigger for me. Along with the smell, the gooey, stringy feeling when I reach inside a pumpkin to pull out the seeds makes me feel like a kid again.
I still enjoy thinking up fun faces to carve. One year I carved a blue hubbard squash into an elephant. The pointy stem end was the trunk! (Carving it was challenging. Hubbard squash store well because of the hard, thick rind.)
After Halloween, I cook our jack-o-lanterns. First, I cut them up into manageable chunks. Then I roast the chunks, uncovered, on a cookie sheet.
Once the flesh is cooked and soft, I scrape it from the skin and puree it with an immersion blender. I use some of the pureed pumpkin right away; and freeze some for later. My kids love pumpkin muffins, so I often make a batch of muffins as I’m processing our jack-o-lanterns. (Recipe below.)
Besides muffins, I use home-cooked pumpkin puree for any recipe that calls for tinned pumpkin: pies, pudding, soup, loaves. Pumpkins sold for jack-o-lanterns are not usually as sweet as pie pumpkins, and they’re often a bit more watery. So I adjust recipes accordingly.
Recipe: Pumpkin Muffins
Nana Biggs’ pumpkin muffin recipe. I halve the sugar, and add raisins and nuts.
One of Nana Biggs’ favourite recipes was pumpkin muffins. As a kid, I’d cut up my jack-o-lantern the day after Halloween, and then pack it up to take to Nana. She kept me well fed with muffins!
(My Uncle Bill didn’t like me giving Nana so much pumpkin, because he didn’t like the muffins. I never let him forget that. One year, after I’d moved away from home, I baked him a cake-sized muffin and sent it to him by courier!)
Pumpkin Muffin Recipe
Ingredients
2 eggs
1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup pumpkin
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
Directions
Cream together eggs, sugar, and oil
Add pumpkin
Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt
Bake at 350°F for approximately 30 minutes, until done
Note: I halve the sugar and use less oil if the pumpkin is more watery than tinned pumpkin
Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
I roast the pumpkin seeds too.
After I rinse them (to remove slime and stringy bits), I toss them with a bit of vegetable oil, salt, and garlic powder. Then I roast them on a cookie sheet until they start to make a popping sound.
In my daughter Emma’s book, Gardening with Emma, she tells kids how pumpkins in the garden start to sag, and then become spots on the soil by spring.
(If you’ve ever wondered about hulless pumpkin seeds, the ones you see at the store are not individually shelled. They are from a pumpkin variety that produces hulless seeds.)
Can you Compost Pumpkins?
Any pumpkins that I don’t cook end up feeding the soil. I sit them on the garden, outside our back window. Then, we watch them slowly collapse into the soil. My daughter Emma shares this idea in her book Gardening with Emma.
You can also put your jack-o-lanterns in the compost pile.
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Written for kids by a kid, this guide helps kids see the fun side of gardening, whether it’s growing giant vegetables, making a bug vacuum, or making a sound-themed garden.
Emma shares lots of inspiring ideas for young gardeners about how to grow healthy food, raise cool plants, and have fun outdoors.
Copies from the Food Garden Life shop are signed by Emma!
Create a Magical Dragon-Themed Garden for Children
By Steven Biggs
Kids Think of the Best Children’s Gardening Activities!
Endless opportunities to shape gardening activities to what interests your child. When it's fun, they'll be spending time in the garden!
A dragon-themed garden never occurred to me.
It was Finn's idea.
Finn and him mom came to my daughter Emma's talk about gardening activities for children.
She told the kids they didn't have to garden like grown ups. Because grown ups want things to look nice, she said. Kids just want it to be fun.
She told the kids in the audience to think of ways to make their garden space fun. Really fun. One way to do that, she explained, is to pick something you like, and then use it to make a theme garden.
Grow a tickling garden with plants that are good for tickling...great for the whole family
Grow a garden that's your favourite colour (she talked about a kid she met who grew a purple garden!)
Or grow a giant's garden with giant sunflowers and mammoth pumpkins
If you're looking for ideas to get kids involved in their own garden or growing their own food, keep reading for some super fun ideas!
Dragon Garden Sparks Finn's Imagination
After Emma talked about using their garden space to make a theme garden, Emma told the kids about some of her own favourite plants that summer.
And one of her favourite plants was a bean with unusual markings called ‘Dragon Tongue.'
The next morning, Finn's mom sent us a note. He loved the ‘Dragon Tongue' bean. He loved dragons. So he decided he'd grow a dragon-themed garden.
How's that for a creative children's garden!
Dragon Tongue beans for a dragon-themed garden. (Photo by Emma Biggs)
Dragon Plant Guide
Veggies and Flowers with "Dragon" in the Name
Emma and I loved Finn's idea for his own garden. His dragon-themed garden.
So we scoured seed websites and seed catalogues for dragon-themed plants. Here's what we came up with:
Dragon's Egg cucumber
Purple Dragon carrot
Red Dragon arugula
Dragon's Fire arugula
Tongue of Fire bean
Snapdragon…and there are so many sizes and colours
Dragon's Toe pepper
Green Dragon cucumber
Thai Dragon hot pepper
Blue Dragon dracocephalum
Flower Dragon watermelon
Black Dragon coleus
Dragon's Claw millet
Taking the Dragon-Garden Idea Further - More Fun!
Dragon-Like Vegetables and Flowers
Then we thought about how we'd describe a dragon. We came up with ideas like spiny, toothy, winged, and pointy.
That helped us find even more plant ideas for the dragon-themed children's garden:
Litchi tomato for it's spiny skin! Perfect snack for a dragon.
Toothy. (An agave looks pretty toothy to my imagination. Or, if you want to stretch things, dandelion comes from French—dent-de-lion—which means "lion's tooth.” I even found a daylily called ‘Snaggle Tooth.')
Long and pointy for the tail. (Corn? …I'll let the kids brainstorm this one.)
Leathery or spiny for dragon-like skin. (I'm picturing citrus rind here; and Litchi Tomato would be perfect!)
Serpent-like shape. (I think snake gourds might work!)
Wings (How about a winged bean, angel wing begonia…or maybe something with winged seeds such as maple?)
I'm sure there are lots more plants with a dragon connection. E-mail us if you have any to add to the list!
How to Build a Dragon Garden
Turn an Outdoor Space into a Kid's Garden
If you think a dragon-themed garden is a fun way to keep your kids occupied this summer, here are steps you can go through with them. Older kids might be able to do much of this on their own. Little ones might need you to guide them through the process.
Choose a garden space. It could be a corner of your garden, or maybe you want to help them create a new garden.
Get the space ready. Digging can be a fun part of the process, so include the kids right from the beginning.
Decide what you'll grow. For first-time gardeners, starting with a handful of plants is more doable.
Get seeds or plants. Buy or trade seeds and plants. (Here's a guide to seed companies.)
Start your seeds indoors in the spring. (Here's a guide to growing plants from seed.)
Transplant seedlings outdoors into the garden when there's no more risk of frost. You can help guide the plant spacing, but remember it's more fun for kids when they help plant the garden.
Care for your dragon-themed garden over the summer. Water the plants and remove any weeds that grow.
Take pictures to show friends!
Another Themed Garden for Kids
Check out the picture below of the harvest from Emma's rainbow-themed garden. It's full of veggies with as many colours as possible.
A Rainbow-themed garden, from the book Gardening with Emma. If you're looking for ideas for gardening activities, you'll love the book.
More Theme Garden Ideas
Pizza garden. Vegetables and herbs used to make a pizza!
Salsa garden. Herbs and veggies to make homemade salsa.
Bug's garden. For kids who love bugs, set up an outdoor space where they can have their own nature scavenger hunts for bugs! Include logs and rocks that kids can lift up to hunt for bugs, and flowers for flying insects.
Hummingbird garden. For children who are interested in birds, select flowers that attract hummingbirds.
Mud kitchen. Not so much a garden as an outdoor space for kids to use soil, seeds, flowers...whatever you're willing to part with, to enjoy the sensory aspects things related to gardening. Great way to get them in the fresh air, and for little kids, a fun way to work on gross motor skills. (We had lots of mud stew prepared in our garden over the years.)
Gardening Benefits for Children
Gardening can be a fun way of spending time together with kids. It can be terribly boring, too, if it's too adult-centric.
So think of ways to make it fun for kids. A little bit of ownership and responsibility can go a long way.
Besides growing plants in a garden, there are also lots of gardening activities to get kids outdoors in the fresh air. For example, instead of raking leaves onto a compost heap, rake them into a pile to jump on. Then rake them into the shape of imaginary buildings. Make a few buildings!
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Appreciate the absence of junky affiliate links for products you don’t need?
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If we’ve helped in your food-gardening journey, we’re glad of support. You can high-five us below. Any amount welcome!
More Kids Gardening Ideas
Kids Gardening Articles and Interviews
Looking for more kids gardening ideas?
Click the button below to head over to the children's gardening area for more gardening activities for kids.
Kids Gardening Book
Want a fun book to inspire the kids in your life to explore the garden?
My daughter, Emma, wrote Gardening with Emma. It's full of super fun gardening activities for kids.
Make a Bug Vacuum
Make a bug vacuum.
By Steven Biggs
A Bug Vacuum is Fun for Kids
Not sure how to make the garden a fun place for kids?
It doesn’t always have to be about plants. Some kids might want to climb trees. Some might enjoy mud.
And some kids LOVE bugs.
My son Keaton has always gravitated towards bugs. When he was smaller he’s spend big chunks of time scouring our yard for bugs to suck up and inspect in his bug vacuum.
Make a Bug Vacuum with your Kids
You can purchase bug vacuums. But those battery-powered gadgets soon break.
Instead, make this bug vacuum with some easy-to-find materials.
Even better, make it with your kids. It’s a fun and easy project to tackle together.
Here’s a simple bug vacuum that you can make at home (from the book Gardening with Emma.)
My son Keaton catches a pollinator with his bug vacuum. After watching it, he unscrews the lid to release it. Photo Donna Dawson.
Find This Helpful?
Enjoy not being bombarded by annoying ads?
Appreciate the absence of junky affiliate links for products you don’t need?
It’s because we’re reader supported.
If we’ve helped in your food-gardening journey, we’re glad of support. You can high-five us below. Any amount welcome!
Looking for more fun ideas to make the garden a fun place for kids?
Check out Gardening with Emma for lots of fun ideas and projects for kids (and parents!) in the garden.
Written for kids by a kid, this guide helps kids see the fun side of gardening, whether it’s growing giant vegetables, making a bug vacuum, or making a sound-themed garden.
Emma shares lots of inspiring ideas for young gardeners about how to grow healthy food, raise cool plants, and have fun outdoors.
Copies from the Food Garden Life shop are signed by Emma!
