Pumpkin

A pumpkin is an uncommon block that appears on grass in a similar manner to mushrooms but does not spread. They can appear in a variety of biomes, usually in groups but occasionally alone.

Pumpkins can currently only be found with a carved face. It was originally stated by Notch that they were to be found and then subsequently carved by crafting. Instead, pumpkins can be crafted into jack 'o' lanterns (see below). Jeb has stated that pumpkins may eventually spawn uncarved.

Pumpkins cannot be placed without a block under them. However, you can place them and remove the block directly beneath and it will remain in place. This reveals that the bottom texture is the same as the top. When placed, pumpkins automatically face the player.

When a pumpkin is pushed by a piston, it breaks. It also cannot be pulled by a sticky piston.

Uses
Harvested pumpkins can be equipped as a helmet without any actual armor value. It is unique in that it limits the player's view of the world as if it were seen from inside the pumpkin. The pumpkin helmet can be removed and placed into the player's inventory. Since worn pumpkins are considered by the game to be armor, they can be enchanted in Creative Mode or through third party tools to make a helmet that acts as armor and yet never takes any damage (since it has no durability). This also works with heads, which won't block the player's view, but looking at Endermen would still provoke them.

When worn as a helmet, the player may look directly at Endermen without consequences, making it useful for going outside at night. However, due to the limited visibility that the pumpkin mask has, it can be a serious drawback to your ability to effectively spot and engage other mobs. The limited visibility may be modified or removed by the use of resource packs or third person view - which, in turn, does have its own drawbacks. You can remove the blur caused by the pumpkin by going into minecraft's jar file, opening the misc file, and editing the pumpkin blur picture by making it transparent.

Pumpkins can be used to make Snow Golems and Iron Golems by stacking 2 blocks of snow/iron, (and also 2 blocks of iron to the side for Iron Golems) and then placing a pumpkin on top as the head. The pumpkin must be placed last or it will not work.

Farming
Pumpkin farming strategies parallel those of melons. Planted pumpkin seeds grow a central stem that, after maturing, spawns pumpkins randomly in adjacent vacant dirt/grass/farmland. If a pumpkin is harvested without also cutting the central stalk, another pumpkin will spawn afterwards without requiring replanting or waiting for the stalk to mature again. Pumpkin farms require somewhat less maintenance than carrot, potato, and wheat farms, since they only require continually harvesting the pumpkins, and do not require manual replanting.

If a mature central stalk is cut (instead of being left to grow more pumpkins), it yields pumpkin seeds. Seeds can also be found in chests in Abandoned Mineshafts, or by finding naturally-spawned pumpkins and crafting them into seeds.

Pumpkin stems take around 10 to 30 minutes to fully develop. Bonemeal will cause a pumpkin stem to become fully-grown, but will not produce a pumpkin immediately. As pumpkin stalks only need to be grown once in order to spawn unlimited pumpkins afterwards, they represent a more worthwhile investment of bonemeal than most other plants.

Pumpkins will grow facing 0 (south) in a farm, regardless of where the stem is, but natural wild pumpkins can be found facing any direction. Since pumpkins can grow on both farmland and dirt, there is no reason to till the dirt back to farmland after harvesting a pumpkin, especially since an appearing pumpkin destroys the farmland beneath it. Pumpkin stems will only connect to one pumpkin block, if not already connected to one, they will connect to any pumpkin that grows or is placed next to them. Once connected to a pumpkin, a stem cannot grow another one until the one it's linked to is removed.

Pumpkin stems cannot be grown in The End unless matured by bone meal and they will not produce pumpkins. For more details and farm layout suggestions, see the tutorial. One fairly good layout is shown below.



Trivia

 * The pumpkin is the only headgear that obstructs the player's view.
 * If you use an inventory editor to change a pumpkin's damage value, the pumpkin will have no carving, and you can wear it without the carving. Once placed, it will revert to its normal texture.
 * Regardless of the direction the pumpkin is facing, the upper texture is always oriented the same way.
 * Pumpkins cannot be placed directly on transparent blocks; they can be placed indirectly by placing an opaque block first, then placing the pumpkin on it, then removing the opaque block, then putting the transparent block
 * Although pumpkins can spawn on farmland (converting it back to dirt), they cannot be placed onto farmland by the player.
 * If a 1 block high mob is standing next to a pumpkin stem when a pumpkin grows, the mob will suffocate inside the pumpkin or automatically move one block so it's not in the pumpkin. For this reason, it is wise not to place your pets in pumpkin gardens.
 * Undead mobs and Spider Jockeys have a chance to spawn wearing a Pumpkin (or, more rarely, a Jack o'Lantern) on October 31 (Halloween). While Zombies and Skeletons burn normally in daylight, they do not do so when wearing a helmet, and these do count.  Note that the player can not wear a Jack o'Lantern. The mobs will also not drop it if killed.
 * Since pumpkin stems automatically bend towards an adjacent pumpkin so that they appear to be connected, if a pumpkin spawns between two pumpkin stems they both will be connected to it. This also happens with Melons.
 * In the Pocket Edition's Prerelease, pumpkins were a placeable block, but were removed before the alpha release, then re-added in 0.8.0. However, they can't be used as a helmet [Yet].