How do you deal with corn stalks?

[Gary350]

How do you deal with corn stalks?

I cut down my corn stalks while they were still green I they would be easy to cut into pieces. I cut them all into 6" pieces. Now they are dry and hard as wooden sticks. I tried to burn some but it makes too much smoke for neighbors.

I tried to mow them with the lawn mower to mulch them that does not work either.

I put them in the compost and they are still there.

[DoubleDogFarm]

I'll be trench composting mine. Dig a trench and stomp them in. I may add a little fertilizer and then cover with soil.

Eric

[rainbowgardener]

If you have a chipper/shredder, you can grind them up. Otherwise if you throw them in the compost pile, they will break down eventually, though very slow.

[DoubleDogFarm]

I say, Keep the loop intact, why give away your soil.

Eric

[jal_ut]

I just run the roto-tiller over them. They are chopped and turned into the soil. Of course, it takes a healthy tiller to do this.

[freedhardwoods]

I used to run the tiller right over them. It could handle it, but it was a workout for me. This year I cut and stacked them in a windrow beside the garden, tilled the ground and planted soybeans. When I realized the beans were too old to grow, I ran the lawn mower over them several passes to chop them up. It worked pretty good for me.

I always have wanted to mow them first, but my lawn mower deck wouldn't raise high enough to clear the dirt hilled around the stalks. This winter I'm going to make a high clearance mower so I can mow them first. I started on it a while back and didn't get it done.

[applestar]

I'm building a compost pile where I grew corn this year so they are still lying on the ground there, but in previous years, I broke them into more or less even lengths at leaf joints and stacked them log cabin style as open compost pile sides/surround for the extra bins/bays.

[!potatoes!]

I tend to cut them down and just leaf them there all winter, to get trampled and broken down some. chop (or break) smaller in the spring, add to compost or beds.

[jal_ut]

This may seem like cheating, but it does the job. 60 HP John Deere Tractor with a six foot tiller.

[rainbowgardener]

Yup, wonderful! As a city gardener, there's no where on my lot where I could even turn that thing around, but it looks like a lot of fun. When I lived on 5 acres, I still didn't have one of those, but I had a riding lawnmower for the 2 acres of it that were lawn. My partner and I would argue over who got to ride around on the mower!

[imafan26]

I used my cornstalks as Halloween decorations a couple of years. Mostly I cut up the green stalks into small pieces. It would be easier with a chipper, but I don't have one. I till it back into my garden. It breaks down slowly but it does not go to waste.

[freedhardwoods]

This may seem like cheating, but it does the job. 60 HP John Deere Tractor with a six foot tiller.

I would like to have an outfit that big, but for now I have to get by with my Troybilt Horse and Case 446 (16 hp) with a few attachments.

[rainbowgardener]

I really recommend a chipper / shredder as a necessary tool for gardeners. You can get a light duty 5 hp one pretty cheap. I use mine a lot for turning brush into wood chips and making woody-ish or tough stuff like tomato vine ready for the compost pile. If you have tons of fall leaves, you can run some of them through also, just to reduce the volume and help them compost a lot faster. A big pile of brush becomes a bucket of wood chips.

[evtubbergh]

What brands of chippers do you guys get? My parents bought one and it just got stuck all the time. Hard stuff jams things up and stout stuff just sort of squishes up and blocks things up.