Want to know more about Minecraft pumpkins? The orange fruit – yes, it’s a fruit – is a great way to decorate, especially during pumpkin spice season. As one of the most versatile blocks in Minecraft, the pumpkin has several surprising uses. We’ve been farming and carving pumpkins in Minecraft so we can tell you what to do with all those leftovers – once you’ve made pumpkin pie, of course.
Once you’ve got one pumpkin, you can farm more, make tasty Minecraft treats, and even craft Jack o’Lanterns. While pumpkins are a treat all year round, if a hostile Minecraft mob spawns during Halloween, there’s a chance they’ll show up sporting a carved pumpkin on their head – but we still haven’t decided whether that’s a trick or a treat. If you aren’t willing to tackle a Halloween mob for its head, or just want to bake a pie, here’s everything you need to know about Minecraft pumpkins.
How to carve a pumpkin in Minecraft
Carving a Minecraft pumpkin is fairly simple – just use shears on a placed, uncarved pumpkin. The pumpkin drops four seeds, and you can pick up your new spooky friend with any tool or your hand.
You can then craft a jack o’lantern by combining a carved pumpkin with a torch – they provide a small amount of light, and can be placed underwater to illuminate the ocean floor, which is always useful.
It probably goes without saying, but no, you can’t un-carve a Minecraft pumpkin – you’ve brought it into the world, and you’re responsible for it now.
Minecraft pumpkin uses
Make a snowman with a carved pumpkin
Do you want to build a snowman? Carved pumpkins aren’t just for decoration – they can also be used to create iron or snow golems. Place four iron blocks in a T shape before popping the carved pumpkin or jack o’lantern on top to make your Minecraft iron golem.
For a snow golem, you’ll stack two snow blocks vertically and top it off with your carved pumpkin. Take this one step further with a little known fact – using shears on a snow golem removes the pumpkin from its head, revealing a cute little face of coal beneath.
Pumpkin pie recipe
Ah, pumpkin pie. One of the more appealing Minecraft foods available, at least before you add any food-based Minecraft mods into the equation. Here’s how you can whip up a comforting pumpkin pie in your Minecraft kitchen (fancy kitchen build not required, but it’s more fun that way).
To make pumpkin pie, combine a pumpkin with sugar and an egg in your crafting table. It’s as simple as that – and eating one restores eight hunger and 4.8 saturation. If cooking isn’t your forte, apprentice-level farmer villages might trade you four pumpkin pies in exchange for an emerald. You might be able to find them in chests in taiga villages, too.
Where to find Minecraft pumpkins
Minecraft pumpkins naturally spawn in some villages, and in stem farm rooms inside woodland mansions, but those are particularly tricky to find. Luckily, they generate in green biomes, and are usually out in the open and fairly easy to spot from a distance. Just keep your eyes peeled as you explore and you’ll no doubt stumble upon some.
You’ll also find carved pumpkins – those spooky siblings of regular pumpkins – in rail rooms in woodland mansions. Carved pumpkins show up in pillager outposts inside tents alongside normal pumpkins, too, and atop scarecrows. Pumpkins also generate instead of hay bales outside taiga and snowy taiga villages. There are even more ways to get your hands on a pumpkin – they have a 15.6% chance of showing up in chests inside shipwrecks, and you may be able to buy one from a wandering trader.
If all else fails, you might be lucky enough to find pumpkin seeds in dungeon, mineshaft, village, or woodland mansion chests, and you can just start your own pumpkin farm from scratch. Speaking of which…
How to make a Minecraft pumpkin farm
So, now you have a pumpkin pie addiction and you need a constant supply of winter squash. This calls for a pumpkin farm. Hopefully, you didn’t eat your last pumpkin, because you’ll need to shear it for its seeds (or place it in a crafting grid). These seeds need to be planted on hydrated farmland, with an empty spot next to it where the pumpkin can go, as – like melons – they grow a stalk and generate on a neighbouring block. It’s possible for one pumpkin to grow attached to two stems, which isn’t efficient, so you’ll need to make sure each stem has one spawnable spot that doesn’t overlap with another stem’s spawnable spot.
There are pumpkin farm designs of varying efficiency, but the design above is a good place to start – it’s based on a 9×9 grid. Technically, only the middle square needs to be filled with water, but you do need to fill the rest of the row with something, to avoid overlap. This is a manual Minecraft pumpkin farm design – if you want to know how to create an automated pumpkin farm, check out NaMiature‘s YouTube tutorial for a 1.20 farm below. The most efficient pumpkin farms will include melons, as alternating them prevents overlap, but you can use just pumpkins if you wish.
There are a few more cool things you can do with pumpkins – place one under a note block, and it’ll generate didgeridoo sounds when the block is activated. You can also wear the carved pumpkin on your head – it’ll obscure your vision, but you can look at Endermen without them getting annoyed at you. If you’re decorating your Minecraft house with pumpkins, why not add a decorative sea pickle on top – it looks just like a stalk.
So now you know how to grow a field full of pumpkins, you’re be ready for spooky season, thanksgiving, or any time of year, really. While you’re waiting for your pumpkins to grow, take a look at some of the other farm ideas to spruce up your outdoor Minecraft builds, and make sure you’re wearing the right Minecraft skin to compliment that carved pumpkin head.