A stretch of North Central Avenue turns into a pumpkin patch every October, and this weekend adds a painting night on top of the regular visit.
The Seminole Heights Great Pumpkin Patch reopened for the season on October 7 and runs Wednesday–Thursday 5–8 p.m. and Friday 4–8:30 p.m. through the month, with a $5-donation pumpkin painting event on Sunday, October 18, and Monday, October 19. It’s become a neighborhood fixture rather than a commercial haunted-attraction operation — pick your own pumpkin off the lot, no admission just to walk around.
Seminole Heights runs a genuinely dense fall calendar — the patch, a kids market later in the month, and a steady run of neighborhood markets — and this is the easiest entry point if you’ve only got an evening to spare. It’s walkable from most of the bungalow streets around Central and Hillsborough if you’re already in the neighborhood for dinner.
When: Patch open Wed–Thu 5–8pm, Fri 4–8:30pm through October; pumpkin painting Sun Oct 18 & Mon Oct 19
Where: 6111 N Central Ave, Tampa
Cost: Free to visit; pumpkin painting is a $5 donation; pumpkins themselves are priced individually at the lot.
Good to know
This isn’t a weekend-only operation — the Wednesday/Thursday hours are genuinely less crowded than Friday evening if you want to actually pick through the lot instead of fight a crowd for it. Street parking fills up fast on Central Avenue itself; side streets a block over are usually the easier bet.
Hours and the painting-event date come from the patch’s own schedule and can shift — check ahead, especially later in the month as inventory and hours sometimes change.
Photo: Jurassic Blueberries, licensed Public Domain Mark, via Flickr. (Generic pumpkin patch, not this location.)