Turn a hollowed pumpkin into a planter: step by step

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A hollowed pumpkin makes a good planter for a few weeks, as long as you line it and use plants that barely need water. Succulents and small cacti are the right choice, and when the pumpkin goes soft the whole arrangement lifts out and moves into a pot or a terrarium.

The end of a carved pumpkin is usually the green bin. It does not have to be. A pumpkin that is still firm makes a perfectly good container for a few weeks, and it looks a great deal better on a table than another plastic pot. The catch is water: pumpkins rot from the inside out, so the whole trick is choosing plants that hardly need any.

What you need

• A hollowed pumpkin, ideally one with the opening cut in the top for this job
• A plastic bag, a plastic pot or a saucer to line the inside
• A little potting soil, or cactus soil if you have it
• Three to five small plants: succulents or small cacti are the safest choice
• Moss, gravel or small pine cones to cover the soil
• Optional: a few mini pumpkins around the base to tie it together

Step by step

1. Hollow it out and dry it. If the pumpkin is not already empty, cut the opening in the top for this version, scoop out the seeds and strings and scrape the wall back to roughly two centimetres. Then dry the inside completely with kitchen paper. A wet pumpkin with soil in it turns to mush in under a week.

2. Line the inside. This is the step that decides how long the arrangement lasts. Push a plastic bag into the cavity and fold the edges over the rim, or simply sit a plastic pot or a deep saucer inside. The soil should never touch the pumpkin flesh directly.

3. Add a drainage layer. A centimetre of gravel or clay pebbles in the bottom gives any excess water somewhere to sit that is not against the roots. There is no hole in the bottom, so this layer is doing the work a drainage hole would normally do.

4. Add soil and set the plants. Fill with a few centimetres of soil, then place the biggest plant slightly off centre and work the smaller ones around it. Leave the leaves just above the rim so the pumpkin frames the arrangement instead of hiding it. Press the soil down lightly.

5. Cover the soil. Moss, gravel or a scatter of small pine cones over the surface makes the difference between a project and a finished object. It also slows evaporation.

6. Water almost nothing. A tablespoon or two of water at the base of each plant is plenty, and then leave it alone for a week or more. Succulents in a container with no drainage hole are far more likely to die of too much water than too little.

Which plants work, and which do not

Succulents and small cacti are the right answer. They store their own water, they are happy in shallow soil and they do not mind being moved around. Small houseplants with tough leaves work too, and so do heather and small autumn bedding plants if the pumpkin is standing outside.

What does not work: anything that likes constant moisture. Ferns, calathea and moss-loving plants need the soil damp, and damp soil against pumpkin flesh means rot within days. Those plants belong in a closed glass terrarium, not in a vegetable.

How long it lasts

Indoors, on a table, expect two to three weeks before the pumpkin starts to soften. Outside in cool autumn weather you can get four to six weeks, sometimes the whole of November. It lasts longer if you keep it out of direct sun, keep the outside dry and check the base every few days for soft patches.

The same rules as a carved pumpkin apply. Cool is better than warm, dry is better than damp, and a thin layer of oil on the cut rim keeps the edge from curling. Our guide on keeping a pumpkin from rotting has the rest.

What to do when the pumpkin goes

This is the whole point of lining it. When the pumpkin gets soft, lift the liner out with the plants and soil still in place and move the arrangement straight into a pot, a bowl or an open glass terrarium. Nothing has rooted into the pumpkin, so nothing is damaged.

If you like the look of plants arranged in glass rather than in a vegetable, that is exactly what a DIY terrarium kit is: the same twenty minutes of arranging, in a container that does not have a use by date. The pumpkin version is the seasonal one.

The empty pumpkin goes in the compost, minus any glitter or paint. Then wash the liner, because you will want it again next October.

Doing it with children

This is a good project to hand over almost entirely. Cutting is a job for an adult, but the scooping, the soil, the plants and the moss are all things a child of five or older can do without any help. It takes twenty minutes, it makes very little mess if you work on a tray, and it ends with something they made that stays alive.

The full pumpkin process, from picking one in the shop to composting it, is in our pumpkin guide.

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