Garbage. Most forms of kitchen waste make excellent compost.  But Americans foolishly send megatons of kitchen garbage to landfills or overburden sewage treatment plants by grinding garbage in a disposal.  The average C/N of garbage is rather low so its presence in a compost heap facilitates the decomposition of less potent materials.  Kitchen garbage can also be recycled in other ways such as vermicomposting (worm boxes) and burying it in the garden in trenches or post holes.  These alternative composting methods will be discussed in some detail later.

Putting food scraps and wastes down a disposal is obviously the least troublesome and apparently the most “sanitary” method, passing the problem on to others.  Handled with a little forethought, composting home food waste will not breed flies or make the kitchen untidy or ill smelling.  The most important single step in keeping the kitchen clean and free of odor is to put wastes in a small plastic bucket or other container of one to two gallons in size, and empty it every few days.  Periodically adding a thin layer of sawdust or peat moss supposedly helps to prevent smells.  In our kitchen, we’ve found that covering the compost bucket is no alternative to emptying it.  When incorporating kitchen wastes into a compost pile, spread them thinly and cover with an inch or two of leaves, dry grass, or hay to adsorb wetness and prevent access by flies.  It may be advisable to use a vermin-tight composting bin.

Granite dust. See Rock dust.

Grape wastes. See Apple pomace.

Grass clippings. Along with kitchen garbage, grass clippings are the compostable material most available to the average homeowner.  Even if you (wisely) don’t compost all of your clippings (see sidebar), your foolish neighbors may bag theirs up for you to take away.  If you mulch with grass clippings, make sure the neighbors aren’t using “weed and feed” type fertilizers, or the clippings may cause the plants that are mulched to die.  Traces of the those types of broadleaf herbicides allowed in “weed and feed” fertilizers, are thoroughly decomposed in the composting process.

It is not necessary to return every bit of organic matter to maintain a healthy lawn.  Perhaps one-third to one-half the annual biomass production may be taken away and used for composting without seriously depleting the lawn’s vigor—­especially if one application of a quality fertilizer is given to the lawn each year.  Probably the best time of year to remove clippings is during the spring while the grass is growing most rapidly.  Once a clover/grass mix is established it is less necessary to use nitrogen fertilizers.  In fact, high levels of soil nitrates reduces the clover’s ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen.  However, additions of other mineral nutrients like phosphorus, potassium, and especially calcium may still be necessary.

Lawn health is similar to garden health.  Both depend on the presence of large enough quantities of organic material in the soil.  This organic matter holds a massive reserve of nutrition built up over the years by the growing plants themselves.  When, for reasons of momentary aesthetics, we bag up and remove clippings from our lawn, we prevent the grass from recycling its own fertility.