Staff Writer

Shelly Wigglesworth picks up her five-gallon bucket and dumps it as a group of children watch worms and mulch tumble onto the tabletop.

This is no ordinary day at the library.

Wigglesworth was at Kennebunkport’s Graves Library last week with master gardener volunteers Toni Krouse and Alex Bickerstaff to teach local children about the red wiggler, a composting worm. The event is part of the library’s “All About” series.

“I believe we need to take care of our worms for their earthly benefits,” Krouse says.

The children learned how to make the wigglers a home from a coffee can, torn up newspaper and dirt, and discovered how their new pets can help clean up leftovers from their dinner plates.

Krouse says the worms can eat almost anything, including eggshells, coffee grounds and especially banana peels. However, they’ll die if they eat anything overly salty, such as a pickle.

Alex Ferris, an 8-year-old Kennebunk Elementary School student, says he’s looking forward to feeding his new worms, but they won’t need to help finish his desserts.

“I’ll eat it all first,” Ferris says.

If the worms are given a warm, moist, dark area they will thrive and reproduce. Krouse tells the children that all worms can make eggs. The baby wigglers start out as translucent eggs and within a few weeks reach their full size of a few inches.

When worms eat table scraps they produce humus, a dark natural compost with rich organic matter that helps gardens and household plants grow.

Bickerstaff, a 16-year-old home school student, assists Krouse by helping the children fill their buckets with dirt and leaves.

He met Krouse through the University of New England’s cooperative extension master gardener program, but has always held an interest in gardening.

“We’ve been gardening at the house for a couple of years now,” Bickerstaff says, “but it’s been trial and error and error and error.”

Bickerstaff joined the master gardener program after his mother learned of it in January, and will graduate in May.

After he plants his garden filled with large summer squash, blueberry-sized brussels sprouts and pumpkins, Bickerstaff will have plenty of humus to help the garden along – two of his brothers and his younger sister left the library with their own compost cans filled with worms.

Krouse has spent the last 26 years gardening, both personally and professionally.

“I help people who work full time with their garden,” she says.

But at some point, Krouse says she felt she needed to know the science behind her gardening craft, and joined the master gardener program in January.

Wigglesworth, who graduated from the program two years ago, also teaches gardening to children in local schools. At the library, she helps the children pick their worms from the dirt she dumped from her bucket. The children look through magnifying glasses to try to find the small eggs in the dirt, but enjoy picking up the worms more.

“They’re funny ’cause the way they move,” says Hannah Videa, 4, as she holds up a worm.

Graves Library “All About” program is held every second Thursday of the month at 3:15 p.m. The May 13 program will be about hula hooping.

Staff Writer Suzanne Hodgson can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 233.