More Than Compost Or Mulch: Use This Kitchen Scrap To Start Your Fire Pit This Summer

Warm summer evenings are synonymous with cooking delicious food in the backyard — like butter-smothered corn on the cob. Once your extravagant outdoor feast is over, however, you're stuck cleaning up a mountain of stripped cobs and husks. While this garden ingredient can be reused as mulch or tossed onto a compost pile, there are other, arguably even better ways to repurpose this seasonal kitchen scrap. A fantastic, eco-friendly idea that keeps corn cobs and husks out of the landfill is turning them into fuel for fire pits and backyard campfires. That's right — dried corn cobs and husks can serve as more than just dinner and a compost additive. They're also terrific, all-natural fire starters.

Think about the mechanics of building a successful outdoor fire. For a long-lasting fire pit, you need tinder, which catches the initial spark, and sturdy kindling to help the first licks of flame set fire to the chunky firewood. Corn knocks the first two fire-starting supplies — tinder and kindling — out of the park. The dry, fibrous husks ignite quickly, similar to newspaper, while the cobs burn decently fast, producing a reliably hot flame that will catch logs on fire. Need another reason to stop tossing corn husks when there are clever ways to repurpose them? You get to skip buying chemical-soaked pre-made fire starters or bottles of lighter fluid, making your summertime marshmallow roasting sessions cleaner, greener, safer, and — perhaps best of all — free.

You've already transformed your backyard into a party space. Now you just need to turn your leftover corn cobs and husks into fuel for the fire pit. Doing so is easy; the process requires just a little time and patience. You don't even need any specialized equipment. The critical step is making sure the cobs and husks are bone dry before burning them. If you try to burn them while they're even the tiniest bit damp, they'll produce a lot of irritating smoke instead of a clean flame — and nobody wants that.

Lay the husks and fully stripped cobs on a heat-resistant tray in a single layer. Place the tray in a warm, sunny spot out of the wind and leave it there until the food scraps feel brittle, lightweight, and dry. Once they're completely dry, you can easily store them in an ordinary paper bag or a breathable basket somewhere sheltered outdoors. Alternatively, to make your own low-cost fire starters, break the dried cobs into chunks using a mallet, pop them in a sealable plastic or glass container, and cover them with liquid fuel or isopropyl alcohol.

When you're ready to light up your stylish stone fire pit for summer entertaining, use the husks as tinder and the cobs as kindling — or just one or the other material as needed. To use both husks and cobs, place a few husks in the center of your fire ring, then stack some dried corn cobs around them. Top the pile with firewood. Hold a long match or grill lighter to the husks, and watch how quickly the flames catch and spread to the cobs. Now you can sit back and enjoy your brilliant, crackling, dry corn-created fire.