One day, all of us may be composting our kitchen waste as routinely as we now recycle our aluminum, glass and paper waste materials, in an effort to reduce the tons of garbage we dump into our landfills.

Besides reducing the load on quickly-filling landfills, another important reason to compost is as near as your garden. If you've joined the home-gardening revolution, as millions of Americans have, to produce your own safe supply of fresh fruits and vegetables, you'll like what compost will do for your plants.

Do all composts reek, and set you up for a stinky encounter with angry neighbors? It's a big reason why folks avoid the practice of composting. Rest easy. A properly-maintained compost pile will never smell offensive.

Before you begin, be sure to double-check with city officials to learn their regulations. Many communities are compost-friendly, and only require that the compost stays smell-free (saving them numerous calls from angry residents).

You'll need a container for your compost, but it needn't be expensive. They come in all sizes and varieties--from the metal garbage can whose bottom has been removed and holes poked into the sides for air; to homemade bins made from chicken wire and wooden pallets. Whichever you choose, be certain it allows for free airflow, one of the key elements necessary for any successful compost operation. Make sure the container doesn't sit in direct sunlight.

Nitrogen and carbon, in equal parts, water, and air are the four essential elements for producing this rich organic plant food. Use these types of materials, and you're on your way to rich soil your plants will love, rewarding you with a healthy harvest:

• Nitrogen producers: Disease and chemical-free green and wet lawn and garden plants ; grass trimmings; vegetable and fruit trimmings and peels.
• Carbon producers: Disease and chemical-free brown, dry yard and gardening material such as leaves, twigs, hay or straw (some prefer straw to hay), untreated sawdust, wood prunings (cut them into foot-long pieces to speed up their break down), pine needles (acidic, use in moderation), newspaper, but no glossy paper or paper with colored inks; wood chips, used sparingly; chopped corncobs and stalks.
• Foods---table scraps, vegetable and fruit peelings; coffee grounds and their filters, tea, loose or bagged. Absolutely never add meat of any kind, or their bones, dairy products, or breads. Eggshells are a protein but are safe to add.

Besides the container, supplies you'll need are a pitchfork for turning the materials (preferred over a shovel), and a kitchen bucket with lid for storing food scraps. Collecting them in the bucket for a few days saves daily trips to the compose pile.

Because heat helps decompose the materials, you'll want to feel warmth to a hand placed over the pile. No heat means an improper carbon-to-nitrogen balance. Generally speaking, materials should be partially breaking down and creating warmth within five to seven days from the start of the compost. Temperature inside the pile should be around 100-degrees.

Regularly tend to your compost several times a week. The pile is ready when particles look dark and fine, and they smell earthy.

Most folks who compost stick with it year after year. Reasons include the savings on city garbage bags because they're using fewer on garbage pick-up days, and they don't miss the smell that decaying food scraps create in their kitchen trash cans.

Composting is a "do" campaign. Don't be afraid to get out and do it.