LEWISTON — Sixteen-year-old Casey Paladino didn’t know beans about how to raise vegetables, or why he should eat them, until this summer.

On Friday, he was speaking publicly about the importance of eating fruits and vegetables in a variety of colors.

Asha Hirsi, 15, said her attitude about food has changed too since participating in the  Youth Gardeners Program. “Before it was, ‘yeah, vegetables.’ Now it’s ‘Vegetables! OK, let me try it!’”

Rhahma Odowa, 16, can talk at length about the problems of hunger in Lewiston-Auburn.

And Tom Smith, 15, will tell you the do’s and don’t’s of planting tomatoes and cucumbers (plant cucumber seeds in mounds of dirt, don’t plant too close together, they need room).

The four Lewiston teenagers are among 15 who participated in the eight-week program which is part of Lots to Gardens.

Sherie Blumenthal, food access coordinator at the center, said the students learned about nutrition, what it’s like to hold a job, hunger in the community, communications, food systems and agriculture and gardening.

The bulk of their time was spent working in the 12 community gardens around Lewiston, gardens where more than 80 families grow food, and more food is given to food pantries or used for nutritional programs.

On Friday, the students hosted the annual community lunch, cooking for volunteers and donors to the Youth Gardeners Program. Most of the food they grew.

“It’s a chance for the youth to show off what they’ve done,” Blumenthal said.

With the smell of good food filling the air, a crowd made their way through a buffet line. The menu was vegetable based: garden red and yellow tomatoes with basil, potato salad, collard greens, cucumber salad, corn on the cob, zucchini muffins, barbecued beans and blueberry and strawberry yogurt.

Since he started gardening this summer, Paladino said, “I’ve learned so much. I could start my own garden right now. They taught us weeding, basic stuff to keep your plants living, all the amount of food they need, water, nutrients back in the soil to have healthier plants.”

The worst part is the heat. “It does get exhausting and hot working in the gardens. When you’re turning composting beds, it’s not pretty.” The best part is seeing vegetables come alive. “When you plant it’s all bare ground. A couple of weeks later everything’s coming up.”

The experience has opened his eyes about vegetables. “I used to not be the healthiest eater. But all the vegetables we’re growing, I found a lot of new foods I like.”

They’ve also learned what those vegetables do to bodies. In fruits and vegetables, different colors mean different vitamins and nutrients, Paladino said. “Red food helps your heart; yellow and orange foods help your immune system and vision; purple and blue help memory and help your body age better. Green helps your bones and teeth. And white help with digestion.”

Hirsi said now that they know how to raise food, they can grow their own “so we don’t have to go to the stores and waste money. We can do it in our backyards.”

This is Odowa’s third summer with the program. An intern, she organizes workshops that teach. One was about hunger in Lewiston. “It’s a hidden problem,” she said. Some of the hungry are single mothers and babies. One solution is the community gardens they work in.

“We can’t do something big, but we can help people get their gardens started. We give them vegetables and also teach them,” she said,

In addition to knowing how to raise vegetables, Smith said he knows more about cooking and nutrition.

“I’ve learned good and bad things to eat. Sometimes I take that with me, sometimes I don’t. When I’m shopping I choose whole grain instead of white. I choose more fruits and vegetables.”

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