How to carve your Pumpkin

Read our instructions on how to carve your pumpkin safely with your children, how to make pumpkin soup

You may not think that Halloween and compost have much in common - but the national Recycle Now campaign is asking everyone to spare a thought for the nvironment on October 31st.

How to carve a pumpkin

1. Select a fresh pumpkin in a shape that pleases you. Some folks prefer their pumpkins low and round, while others like them tall and oval-shaped

2. Draw a circle or hexagon on top of the pumpkin in preparation for making an opening large enough for your hand to reach through

3. Cut through the stem end of the pumpkin along your outline with a sharp knife. Use a back-and-forth slicing motion to cut through the thick, tough skin 4. Remove the stem end, which will act as a cap, making sure you scrape off any seeds or pulp

4. Use a large spoon to scoop out the seeds and pulp from inside the pumpkin. Hold the spoon by its bowl to get extra leverage while scooping. Use the seeds and pulp for cooking or add to your compost bin

5. Draw a pattern for the face on the clean pumpkin with a felt-tip pen, or scribe the lines into the skin using a pencil. Be sure to make the eyes, nose and mouth large enough - you'll have a hard time cutting out tiny features
   

6. Follow your pattern as you carefully cut all the way through the pumpkin with a kitchen knife

7. Push the cut-out features gently from the inside of the pumpkin and discard the pieces in your compost bin

8. Place a night light inside the pumpkin to create an eerie glow

9. When Halloween is over, use a knife to cut the pumpkin in to pieces and add the whole lot to your compost bin.

   Easy pumpkin soup Preparation time less than 30 mins Cooking time 10 to 30 mins Ingredients 1 large pumpkin, cut in chunks 2 cloves garlic, chopped 1 medium red chilli, chopped 1 can coconut milk or cream lots of coriander leaves salt and pepper

   Method 1. Cut the pumpkin into quarters so they are a manageable size to work with. Scoop out the seeds and remove the skin 2. Chop the flesh into small chunks and cook in boiling water until soft 3. Meanwhile, add the chilli, garlic, half the coriander, salt and pepper to a blender and whiz until well blended 4. When the pumpkin is soft, drain the cooking water but reserve it. Put the pumpkin into the blender with the chilli mix and blend 5. Put the mixture back into a saucepan, add the coconut milk and simmer. If it is too thick, add some of the reserved cooking water 6. Serve in large bowls and add the remaining chopped coriander for garnish

How to grow pumpkins

Pumpkins grow best in warm sunny conditions and well drained soils are essential.

• Preparing the vegetable patch
  In spring make planting holes which are the width and depth of a garden spade. Fill the holes with well-rotted manure or home compost and replace the soil to form a mound over each hole. Space the mounds at least one metre apart.

• Sowing the seeds
  Sow seeds in mid to late April. Sow one seed each in a 7cm plastic pot in potting compost. You can make good potting compost from your home compost by mixing one part home compost to one part sharp sand and one part top soil or leaf mould. Sow the seeds 2cm deep and in good light to maintain growth. If you live in an area where you do not suffer from hard frosts and you do not have a green house, you can grow your seeds in the garden under a cloche.

• Planting
  When the saplings are established and frosts are over, water the mounds and transplant one plant into the top of each mound. Keep well watered and take care not to wet the leaves in strong sunlight -early morning is a good time to water. Give organic liquid feed as required when the fruits start to grow. You can create a liquid feed - known as compost tea - by putting home compost in to an old pair of tights or muslin and using this in your watering can or water butt like a giant tea bag.

• Growing the plants
  Trailing varieties of pumpkins produce many side shoots. These need to have their leading shoots snipped off, leaving 60cm from the main stem. Spread the side shoots evenly around the plant. Pumpkins should be prevented from resting on the soil as this is to avoid rotting of the fruit. Straw can be place under each or they can be placed carefully on pieces of wood.

• Harvest
  Harvest your pumpkins before the first frost. Small pumpkins - anything up to the size of a basket ball - need to be harvested once they are ripe. Larger pumpkins can stay on the plant until late autumn. Cut with a long piece of the stem or handle to delay rotting - you will probably need to use a knife. Leave in a dry sunny place such as a greenhouse for at least 4 days.

• Storage
  For storing, the skin must be perfect and undamaged. Store in cool and dry and well-ventilated place. Pumpkins can be placed on racks or hung in nets as long as they are not touching each other. Storage can be from 2 to 6 months depending on the variety.

Get the family recycling post Halloween

Over one million pumpkins are sold every year in the UK and families are already carving up pumpkins in to scary faces to decorate the house and brighten up the dark autumn evenings. Babies and toddlers are enchanted by the glowing lights of jack-o-lanterns and older kids love getting involved in scooping out the seeds and carving scary faces into a pumpkin, so it's great fun for all the family. However, once the 1st of November arrives and halloween is over, hundreds of thousands of ornately carved pumpkins, not to mention all the pulp inside that is scraped out and goes straight into the bin, may end up on a landfill site.

Like many parents this halloween, TV presenter and mother-of-three Philippa Forrester is backing the amnesty: "Kids love halloween and carving up your pumpkins is great fun. What's not so fun is just chucking all our waste into the bin once Halloween is over.

"If you're anything like me, you'll know how important it is that we do everything we can to help the environment for our kids' futures and home composting is so easy. By putting your pumpkin in the compost bin, you can be sure your halloween celebrations don't have the potential to scare past the 31st of October!" The seeds and pulp that you spoon out of your pumpkin can go straight into the compost bin as soon as you have scraped them out and then once halloween is over, you can add the carved shell. So that it breaks down in time to give next summer's garden a great boost, don't forget to break it up into pieces before adding it to your compost bin.

So if you've got a compost bin in your garden, then join the pumpkin amnesty and make sure you are using it to its full potential this autumn. Composting is an activity for all the family and a great way to start teaching your children about the environment and recycling. Its is so easy to separate your organic household waste - things such as peelings, paper, cardboard, pet hair, egg shells. Kids can get involved learning what can and cannot go in to the compost bin. Once you're in the habit it couldn't be easier. As they get older, kids will love helping gather twigs and leaves from the garden, as well as carrying the kitchen peelings to the bin. The process does require some patience as it can take between six and nine months to produce good quality compost. But in the meantime they can help mix the compost, something which should be done every month or so in order to encourage oxygen to get into the compost to help with the decomposition process.

Your kids can then see how their kitchen and garden waste is magically transformed into a great free-of-charge fertiliser for your garden. If you're not a composter yet, there couldn't be a better time to get started. Check out the website www.recyclenow.com/compost or phone 0845 600 0323 for more details on how to get a compost bin and start composting.