What can you do with corncobs?

[Robernson]

I have oodles of corncobs left over from feeding squirrels. What can I do with these things instead of just burning them?
~~R

[ngcmcn]

A sixty-five year old friend of mine who grew up in California; his Grandfather grew corn…………..they left a bucket of them in the out-house instead of paper!

N

[Joshua Kingsley]

you could grind them up with a chipper shredder and use them for bedding or mulch. If you have a chipper that has a screen for shreading leaves a hole the size of a quarter will give you a semi-fine grind on corn cobs when the flails get done pounding them through the holes. If it is coarser than you want you can run it through again SLOWLY as if you dump it in too fast you will plug the machine.
Joshua

[Robernson]

I didn’t think of mulch that is a good idea! Thanks.
~~R

[Howie]

They make great smoke for curing meat.

[Donn Hewes]

You can compost them. Donn

[dominiquer60]

They contain a lot of Potassium and take a long time to break down. We sell some to a neighbor, spread some in our hay fields and burn some to supplement heat in our greenhouses. I like the mulch idea, but we don’t usually have enough at one time to make enough mulch to cover our 250′ vegetable beds.

[Stable-Man]

@ngcmcn 13679 wrote:

A sixty-five year old friend of mine who grew up in California; his Grandfather grew corn…………..they left a bucket of them in the out-house instead of paper!

N

That’s what I was thinking. You can make some corn cob art with some of them, although different varieties have varying cob sizes. The best ones for that are lower yielding, larger cobbed specimens.

[bivol]

guess you can make (toilet) paper out of them…. or chop or rough mill them for bedding for pigs or poultry… i’m worried about knobs abbility to retain moisture:confused:. since chicken manure has lots of nitrogen, lots of potassium in the knobs should make it a bomb-shell manure.

stuff them in between plank walls of an open field pig house, for isolation. newspaper could do well, but i guess knobs are more weather resistant. i haven’t tried all these things up, but i guess they should work.

hard-to-break-down mulch. sounds good to me…

[near horse]

@bivol 19873 wrote:

guess you can make (toilet) paper out of them…. or chop or rough mill them for bedding for pigs or poultry… i’m worried about knobs abbility to retain moisture:confused:. since chicken manure has lots of nitrogen, lots of potassium in the knobs should make it a bomb-shell manure.

stuff them in between plank walls of an open field pig house, for isolation. newspaper could do well, but i guess knobs are more weather resistant. i haven’t tried all these things up, but i guess they should work.

hard-to-break-down mulch. sounds good to me…

How about using them as projectiles in a homemade air cannon?

[bivol]

@near horse 19893 wrote:

How about using them as projectiles in a homemade air cannon?

similar to the potato cannon?
LOL i’ll keep that in mind in case the situation here cooks up again:D;)

[Scott G]

What can you do with corn cobs??

Now that is a really loaded question.:eek:

I usually give very direct advice on what to do with a corn cob to someone I really don’t care for…

[near horse]

@bivol 19899 wrote:

similar to the potato cannon?
LOL i’ll keep that in mind in case the situation here cooks up again:D;)

Yep – like a potato cannon but not the ones that use an ignition propellant (like hairspray). Just charge the rear chamber w/ air from your compressor, insert potato, aim and open the valve btwn rear chamber and barrel -whooosh. That potato is now a “spudnik” – okay that was a BAD pun.

I built one for a HS physics class I was teaching at the time – hey, maybe that’s why I’m not teaching physics any more!!

Check out a book – Backyard Ballistics. Has some pretty neat stuff to “do” at home.

[bivol]

once tried to put a candle out with hairspray…. didn’t quite work out :rolleyes:

but it is good for killing files and mosquitos if nothing else is available, as a foreplay to famous anti-pest slipper shaolin!

soooo sad we didn’t know of this when my generation were kids!…. oh well, cultural exchange today is beautiful!

backyard ballistics, got it!

[Anonymous]

Onna my first chores was, going down to the corn crib and bringing up a handful of good clean furry cob, fresh from the Mc C sheller and put them in a nice stack on top the shelf where one sat over the hole. We boys and dad and grandpa got the cobs. Mom got the Sears and Wards. We never saw toilet rolls at our farm till we put in the indoor rapper.
Once when we were early in grade school, dad worked construction. He told us to start digging a new hole. Well, we started digging where he told us. Round 3ft down or so, we ran into a strange occurance that later became clear to us was petrified corncobs from when that spot once already had been a hole. We were digging out a hole where one had already been once. We quit. Mom said shed tell dad. We thought dad would point out a new direction. He came home, looked at what we had got accomplished, and said, Keep digging. With a chuckle I think.

Nother thing about cobs. They make great fire starters, and the best use for them is in kitchen wood ranges. For a hot clean fire, they cant be beat. A quick fire too. I mean that if you want a fire to do the cooking with, then want it to go out quickly. Cobs is just the ticklet,
Take a cob and put it in a can 1/2 full of diesel/ When you start your fire in your wood stove or range, put it in and light it. Then cover with paper and small chips or sticks then the main wood if a heating stove. If a range, Start the fire with it, and let it burn for awhile till it get red hot and burns off the diesel before cooking with it.

[Author]

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