Once the kernels have been cut away and bagged up the chickens pick off every last piece of yellow off the cob to leave a perfectly white, if slightly muddy core!

But what do you do with the plant itself once the cobs have been harvested? This year with all the rain mine have excelled themselves and have reached about 7 ft. high. You can let them dry out. They make an excellent kindling for a spring bonfire to burn fruit tree pruning that may be diseased. I also know someone who uses them to light the wood burner! But this seems quite wasteful as they could provide a very valuable source of organic matter.

Maize, the agricultural cousin of sweetcorn has been said to be one of the most damaging crops to the environment. This is mainly due to the fact that crops are harvested in the autumn, with fields then left bare during the winter and thus become very subject to wind and water erosion and pollution due to the leaching of nutrients. I used to cut the spent corn plants near to the ground and remove them, shred them and then compost. But a couple of years ago I tried a new approach, which by returning organic matter directly to the area the corn has grown on, is really benefiting the soil structure.