I think you'll be making a mess you regret. When cornstalks are not removed from the garden, they sit there and grow black mold on them and do not break down by the following year. I tried pulling them from the ground one year and leaving them lying on the ground in a similar manner and they were a big mess the following spring. I ultimately cleaned them all up and removed them from the garden before planting that spring.

If your garden has any sort of pest that likes cornstalks, then leaving the stalks there will attract those pests. My farmer/rancher friends who are gardeners either plow the corn debris from their big veggie gardens into the ground with their tractors after harvest or, in a drought year when the cows are hungry, they feed the cornstalks to their cows. Sometimes my friend, Fred, stops by the house in his pickup and asks me if he can have my cornstalks to feed his cows. When he does, I'm always happy to give them to him. Otherwise, I just throw mine on the compost pile. They'll decompose more slowly on the compost pile than most compostable materials unless I chop or shred them, but they do break down there better than there than they do when left on the ground in the garden.

If you leave them on the ground, I wouldn't plant corn in the same place the following year but would rotate it elsewhere since the cornstalks are likely to harbor corn pests or corn diseases.

Dawn

Thanks, I will feed them to the cows if my step dad still has cows, that is what I have done in the past. Health is causing my step dad to think of selling out. Neither he nor I are able to take care of the place anymore.

Larry