Selling Your Family on Vermicomposting - 5 Tips - Uncle Jim's Worm Farm

Selling Your Family on Vermicomposting – 5 Tips

Compost, Indoor Composters, Outdoor Composters, Red Worms

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Maybe you are one of the lucky ones and you live with others who share your passion for vermicomposting worms. If so, congratulations and lucky you! But for the rest of us, here are a few approaches to consider when trying to win over your favorite “worm-resisters.”

The Garden Angle

Gardeners are perhaps the easiest worm-resisters to convert. That’s because they already know that worms are great soil-builders, and they have a vested interest in worm by-products. Worm castings are some of the best fertilizer around, and a small 4.5-pound bag can easily cost more than $10. With your own vermicompost system, you get that fertilizer for free!

The Eco Angle

Any kind of composting lets you remove compost from the waste stream, and that is a good thing. The EPA estimates that Americans generate roughly 4.38 pounds of household waste each day. Some gets composted, some gets recycled and some gets burned (for energy), but even so, we throw out about half our solid waste products each and every day, and our landfills are getting more full all the time. Vermicomposting lets you reduce the amount of waste you send to the landfill. If your worm-resister is committed to the environment, this may be a good way to convince them that vermicomposting is worth a try.

The Convenience Angle

If you compost outside, you may find it more difficult in the winter. If so, you might want to point out to worm-resisters that, unlike a regular garden compost pile, a vermicomposter can be brought inside.

However, very often people are put off by the idea of intentionally bringing worms and dirt indoors. So if you need to convince someone to consider vermicomposting indoors, work up to it gradually. Start with vermicomposting outdoors near the house.

Manage your worm farm well so that everyone has a chance to experience the convenience and lack of objectionable odors. Then later, when it gets colder and your worms need more protection, propose moving your worms to a sheltered porch, basement or even under the kitchen sink.

The “Eew” Angle

This one works great on kids. Children are very often fascinated by worms, and at a certain age they are drawn to things they know others consider “gross.” You don’t have to tell them how educational a worm farm could be (leave that argument for convincing parents). But you can let them set up a Worm Factory 360 or a worm hobby kit. Then draw their attention to the worms’ activity, how quickly they transform garbage, etc., and let them enjoy the idea that they are grossing out the adults in their lives.

The Money Angle

If you or your kids want a way to make a little extra money, that can be another way to get them interested in worms. Maybe you live in an area where people fish, so selling fishing worms makes sense. If there is no fishing area nearby, you can always sell bags of vermicompost for people to use in their gardens or on houseplants. Or you may want to get a small sprayer and make some compost tea so that you can provide an organic spray treatment for your friends and neighbors.

Any way you look at it, there are a lot of ways to convince even the most dedicated worm-resister to give vermicomposting a try. Let us know how YOU win over the worm-resisters in your life on our Facebook page!

You can order vermicomposting worms from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm.

 

 

 

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