Corn on the cob can be frozen whole, without blanching—you’ll just be a little more limited when it comes time to cook it, as the corn is more likely to develop a chewy or mushy character. Here’s how to freeze unblanched corn when you’re in a hurry: 1. Shuck the corn and discard the husks.

Blanching, followed by chilling in ice water, are critical processes for producing quality frozen corn. The natural enzymes in corn need to be inactivated before freezing to prevent both loss of color and nutrients, and flavor and texture changes. These enzymes are inactivated by a hot blanch treatment.

Freezing Corn Boil water and blanch corn for 5-6 minutes. Remove immediately into a pot of ice water. Let sit for 2 minutes. Cut kernels from the cob if desired.

For best flavor, use corn within two days. Keep husked corn refrigerated, in plastic bags, and use within two days. If you don’t plan on eating your corn within two days of purchase, you can freeze it.

Keeping fresh corn from drying out is key. At home, store the ears wrapped tightly in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. If you don’t plan on eating your corn within three days—and you should unless you like mouthfuls of starch—freeze it.

Freeze dried products take more storage room than dehydrated. Good choice for longer term storage with a shelf life of 25-30 years properly packaged in a #10 can. Dehydrated sweet yellow corn is a good choice.

What are the ways to use corn?

1. Grill some corn to make elotes (Mexican street corn)
2. Make a Mexican street corn salad.
3. Add some to a vegetable salad.
4. Toss into the batter for cornbread.
5. Stir some into cauliflower corn chowder.

Here are seven ideas to turn that leftover corn on the cob into something new.

1. Cut the kernels off the cobs and mix with a small bit of garlic, diced tomato (really just a bit), salt, pepper and some pumpkin seed oil.
2. Cut the kernels off and toss them on top of a fresh salad (via PlentyOfFish)

Yes, they can! Although composting a corn cob takes longer than composting corn husks, the cobs serve an additional purpose even before they decompose into useable compost. Left intact, corn cobs provide air pockets in a compost pile.

In the landfill, it takes about 18 years for a corn cob to decompose. While in the compost bin, only 2 months are required for a corn cob to break down.

What ate my corn?

• Deer. Deer will begin feeding on or tramping down corn starting at emergence.
• Raccoons. Raccoons damage corn by climbing the stalks and breaking them to reach the ears, pulling back the husks and partially eating the cob.
• Wild turkeys.
• Groundhogs (woodchucks)

More often than not, our medium ears of corn produced 3/4 cup of kernels when cut from the cob. So if your recipe calls for 2 ears of corn, you can now confidently know that it means about 1.5 cups of corn kernels. And “How many ears of corn do you need for 1 cup of corn kernels” is about 1 and a third ears of corn.

A large bag of popcorn would have about 29 ears of corn while a small bag will contain about 15 ears.

Each plant requires 3 square feet of space to produce from one to two ears of corn per stalk. Crowded corn will only produce one ear, while two ears will grow on stalks under optimum growing conditions. A 10-by-15-foot garden space is enough for 50 stalks of corn or about 75 ears of corn.