Pumpkin

Plants only appear on their own during the Halloween window, above ground, on ordinary or hallowed grass. Mowed grass and every other grass type is off the table. The game caps density hard as well: a new plant will not appear anywhere that already has five others within a hundred tiles in either direction, and there is a ceiling on how many can occupy one large area at once. Background walls do not block them, so a walled garden works fine.

A world rolled during the season is generated already full of them at mixed growth stages, which is the fastest way to get a pile without waiting on anything. Outside the season nothing new spawns, so you are down to seeds from the Dryad or throwing cactus into Shimmer, which works year round and is limited only by how much cactus you feel like cutting.

A plant moves through five stages and does so all year round, October or otherwise. The first two are the green ones and give you nothing if you cut them. Yield climbs with each later stage, so patience pays out directly and there is no reason to harvest early. Seeds want a clear two by two space to go in.

Two things surprise people. Harvesting never returns a seed, so a field cannot sustain itself and you should buy seeds in quantity rather than expecting a loop. And anything planted below the surface freezes at the first stage permanently. There is no light trick or fertilizer that fixes it, the layer itself is the check.

A fully grown plant breaks to literally any hit: a stray arrow, a whip tail, a swung pickaxe, a pass with the Lawn Mower. It still drops normally when that happens, but the plant is gone. Growing ones are tougher and shrug off hits, and they can be lifted intact with a pickaxe or the Staff of Regrowth if you want to move the field. The mower will even cut the grass under a growing plant without taking it. Put a patch next to an arena you shoot into and you will flatten it without noticing.

Each plant stands on a pair of soil blocks and dies the moment either one is mined, actuated, swapped, or converted to a grass it will not accept. That last one matters most. Corruption or crimson creeping through a field uproots the whole thing as the ground changes underneath it, while hallow spreading over the same field leaves everything standing, since hallowed grass is a legal surface. If you are running a Clentaminator near a patch, the blue solution is safe and the evil ones are not.

The armor set is the real payoff early, since it gives more defense than anything else you can reach before the first boss and adds a flat damage bonus on top. Beyond that the pile goes into the Pumpkin Moon Medallion, a full furniture line, and Pumpkin Pie.

If you are selling rather than building, do not sell them raw. Crafting them into candelabras first is worth far more per pumpkin. That is also why growing them from seed never quite pays for itself while collecting the free seasonal ones does.

Cutting a fully grown plant during the season occasionally yields a Magical Pumpkin Seed, which summons the Squashling pet. It is the only reason to keep harvesting once you have enough material, and it only rolls on fully grown plants during Halloween, so a large seasonal field is the only sensible way to chase it.