Pumpkins are probably the brightest and biggest joys of an organic veg plot. But incredibly, a colossal 15 million pumpkins are wasted each year during Halloween - carved but not eaten.

So this year, rather than compost the entire wasted fruit – or leave it to rot in your garden, which can be a danger to wildlife – get creative in the kitchen.

Use your pound of flesh

Steam chunks of pumpkin for 10 minutes and mash into puree to add to cake mixtures and smoothies. And use the gooey pulp from the middle of the pumpkin for stock alongside onions, celery, garlic and ginger.

Save the seeds

Saving your own seeds is a fantastic way to make the most of your vegetable harvest and save money.

Pumpkins provide particularly abundant seeds and if saved correctly, will store for three to five years in the right conditions. This means you can grow your favourite varieties without spending more money. Best of all, if you’re growing heritage varieties, you can preserve them for future use or pass on to friends and family.

• Step one

Make sure your pumpkin is nice and ripe, cut it open carefully with a knife or saw and pull out the seeds.

• Step two

Rinse them in a sieve under a tap, rubbing off the fibrous coating. Once they’re nice and clean, spread the seeds out to dry on a tray in a warm room away from direct sunlight.

• Step three

Drying can take a few weeks. Test the seeds by snapping them: they only snap when fully dry. Store in an airtight container, somewhere cool and dark until you need to sow them. Follow Garden Organic’s tips for saving seeds for a longer life here.

• Step four

One thing to remember when you come to sow next year, is that squashes, pumpkins and courgettes will easily cross-pollinate if not isolated. Seed sown from cross-pollinated seed will produce fruit that has a mix of parent genetics, and this will result in changes e.g. to appearance and taste, which may not be as expected. Sometimes, the fruits will taste bitter, and this is a sign of a build-up of Cucurbitacins - which are toxic - so you should not attempt to eat these fruits. If you want to guarantee the same variety without buying fresh seed, it's best to follow the pollination and isolation methods in Garden Organic’s seed saving guidelines here.

You can also watch them saving seeds from their Heritage Seed Library’s ‘Lady Godiva’ squash here on Instagram. 

  Support the work of the charity’s Heritage Seed Library, by joining as a member and receive six free packets of heritage vegetable seeds from its December Seed List. Go to gardenorganic.org.uk/join