Twinkle's Tips | 5 ways to recycle your Jack-o'-lantern

Once Halloween has passed, and the spooky decorations begin to come down, don’t just toss away your pumpkins.

Your jack-o'-lantern is still useful to you and nature. Give it a second chance with these pumpkin recycling tips.

Pretty pumpkin planters

Take your carved-out pumpkins and fill with potting soil. Place weather friendly flowers or plants inside the hollowed out vegetables and place around your yard. The cool air will keep the pumpkin from deteriorating too much.

Perfect for fall potting:

• Mum
• Ornamental Kale
• Decorative cabbages
• Marigolds

Feed the “neighbors”

Make sure the wildlife take advantage of a little trick-or-treat by tossing your old pumpkin out into the woods, or in a spot designated already for feeding the surrounding wildlife.

Perfect idea for bird watching as you lounge in the backyard, place the unwanted seeds into the bird feeder and check out your feathered friends.

Save the seeds!

Grow your own pumpkin patch! Dry out the remaining seeds from your jack-o'-lanterns and save for a big patch of pumpkins next year.

You’ll need to save the seeds from several different pumpkins, however. Pumpkins come in male or female and can’t reproduce without seeds from each.

Make sure you’ve got a variety of seeds from several pumpkins to ensure you’re growing a patch of pumpkins instead of a yard full of vines.

Compost it

Before tossing out into the trash, rethink and recycle that pumpkin into the compost. Pumpkins make great fertilizer for next year’s garden when composted.

Make sure to break it down into smaller pieces and remove the seeds. You don’t want a new pumpkin patch taking over your garden next year!

Just eat it

If you’ve got the time, then saving the pumpkin insides for a delicious meal later is the way to go. Pumpkin flesh can be scooped and refrigerated for later, or even frozen for several months.

From soups to breads to traditional pumpkin pie, saving your Jack-o-Lanterns to feed your family can be a real fall treat.

You can also save those pumpkin seeds and toast them for a delicious and healthy snack

Twinkle’s Kitchen: Toasted Pumpkin Seeds – Salty, Spicy and Sweet

-----------------------------------------

Twinkle VanWinkle was born in a small town in Mississippi. A life-long lover of music, media and food, she grew up following those three things along her path. She has almost 20 years of professional cooking under her apron strings, feeding thousands of friends, family and other folks while working in restaurants and bakeries in Oxford, Miss. She baked 300 apple pies for the “Oprah Winfrey Show” and appeared on “The Best Of...” in the same year. Along with producing dynamic entertainment content for LIN Media, she is a mother, musician and social media fanatic.

Follow Twinkle on Foodspotting, Tumblr and Twitter.