Pick up a pumpkin this autumn while enjoying a lovely family day out at one of the fantastic picking farms nearby.
Stroll through orange fields dotted with delightful crops, pick a prize pumpkin and grab a wheelbarrow full of lovely snaps while you're at it.
Then take them home to carve and decorate in time for Halloween and enjoy some delicious leftovers in a soup or similar.
Here's our pick of the pumpkin patches in Southampton and the New Forest.
New Forest Pumpkin Patch, Strawberry Fields, Lymington
The new kid on the block this year, New Forest Pumpkin Patch is free to enter and has a host of seasonal delights to keep the kids entertained.
Pay Strawberry Fields a visit to choose your very own pumpkin from a splendid pumpkin patch.
Whether you want to carve a ghostly jack o’lantern, create a quirky non carve design or turn it into delicious pumpkin pie this Halloween there’s a pumpkin for everyone.
It is also hosting a Pumpkin Bowling Extravaganza.
Roll pumpkins down hay bale lanes and aim for the pins in pumpkin bowling, experience the thrill of launching pumpkins through the air, testing your accuracy or take a break, relax and carve your pumpkin the barn.
Hot drinks and delicious bites will be available.
To book, go to newforestpumpkins.co.uk
Sunnyfields Farm, Marchwood
Ten thousand pumpkins and squash make up this year's spectacular pumpkin display at Sunnyfields Farm.
Farmer Tom Nelson is pictured putting the finishing touches to a giant artwork paying tribute to Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas on its 30th anniversary.
Sunnyfields Farm, at Jacobs Gutter Lane between Totton and Marchwood, is celebrating the run-up to Halloween with its yearly 'Pumpkin Time' event over the next month.
The event has become synonymous with this time of year when families travel from far and wide to embrace all that autumn has to offer and see the farm covered in tens of thousands of pumpkins of all shapes and sizes.
Young visitors love to jump aboard a wheelbarrow and enjoy photo opportunities, be wowed by the displays and pick a pumpkin, before enjoying a pumpkin soup or Halloween themed cookie in the cafe.
Organisers have promised there will be new zones to discover in 2023.
Pickwell Farm, Bursledon
It's your no-frills pumpkin-picking experience, but is no less fun for it.
Farmers have been growing pumpkins at Pickwell for nearly 40 years, and they were the first in the area to open their fields for public pumpkin picking in 2014.
There are ten acres of fields to roam, so grab a wheelbarrow and pick your pumpkins.
There's currently plenty of availability, but pumpkins do usually sell out before Halloween.
Picking Patch, Fordingbridge
Halloween has arrived in Fordingbridge! Are you brave enough to enter the Maize Maze?! Whats that behind you? Watch out - you might not make it out alive!
With five points full of the spooky and the creepy, ghosts and ghouls lurking in the shadows and witches' bubbling cauldrons causing mischief and magic, this is a halloween experience not to be missed.
Booking for the Halloween maze is required. There's thousands of pick your own pumpkins on site too.
See pickingpatch.com
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here