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Making compost is an essential part of healthy green living because you are keeping recyclable items (kitchen and yard wastes) out of landfills.

It is also, of course, an essential part of healthy green gardening: it's one of the very best things you can add to achieve truly healthy soil, and healthy soil is a must for healthy plants.

Making compost is, in essence, putting things into a pile to rot. You can create a pile out of your kitchen scraps and yard waste pretty simply and eventually it will decompose without much input on your part.

There are many compost bins on the market (I like the Earthmaker™ Composter) These are great if you don't have a lot of extra room, you like to keep things neat and orderly, and if you don't particularly want to look at an "ugly pile".

Bins/containers can also ensure that the contents get turned properly and heated optimally for good breakdown, so you will likely end up with a finished usable product sooner than if you just build a pile and let it sit there.

If you have an out-of-sight spot, though, a pile is the simplest and cheapest way to get the job done. And if you put in just a bit of work, your efforts will be richly rewarded.

Basic "Recipe" for Building a Compost Pile:
1-2 parts green (high in nitrogen)- this means grass clippings, green plant trimmings, and food scraps (all fruit and veggie scraps, grains, organic tea and coffee, and eggshells can be added; experts say not to add meat, bones, dairy products, eggs or oils )
1 part brown (high in carbon)- this means leaves, straw, hay, wood shavings, newspaper, cardboard

For adequate heating, it is best to make a pile that is 3 feet by 3 feet. Water should be added to keep the pile as moist as a "wrung out sponge". So keep it covered with a tarp if it's raining a lot and it's getting too wet, and water it with a hose when conditions are very dry.

When building your pile, you should layer the greens and browns and add water to help jump start their breakdown. Then keep an eye on the moisture level and turn the contents with a pitchfork every week or two to make sure it continues to decompose evenly. The more you turn the materials over and get things stirred up, the faster it will decompose.

This "how to compost" guide has lots of additional tips, techniques and troubleshooting help, and here is another comprehensive list of what you can and cannot add to compost.

If you don't have any land and/or you are looking for another way to recycle your food scraps, you can use a specialized bin with compost worms. The original and best book on the subject of composting with worms (vermiculture) is Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Appelhof.

Wormwoman.com is Mary Appelhof's website. She passed away in 2005 but her site and great information lives on.