Sacramento is nicknamed the "City of Trees" for a reason. Even in its most urban core, the city is filled with fruit trees.

So what happens when those trees produce more fruit than the owners can harvest, let alone eat? One option is to let Harvest Sacramento take care of it. This year alone, the group has collected more than 13,000 pounds of fruit from the Sacramento area, all of which goes to the Sacramento Food Bank.

Harvest Sacramento organized a Midtown Fruit Harvest on Saturday in which 25 community volunteers helped pick more than 1,300 pounds of citrus for the food bank. In just three hours, the group collected grapefruit, oranges, lemons and kumquats from nine houses in the grid.

The group was inspired by an East Sacramento couple, Mary McGrath and Robin Aurelius, who organized a grass-roots effort to harvest unwanted oranges from trees in the McKinley Park area. After that group delivered more than 3,000 pounds of citrus to the Sacramento Food Bank in early 2009, Soil Born Farms joined in and took a lead role in increasing community involvement.

"We have big white bins to put the fruit in, and the food bank picks them up and weighs them," said Randy Stannard, a food access coordinator at Soil Born Farms. "The giver gets a receipt and a tax write-off for about $1 per pound."

He mentioned that the group canvasses the grid and asks homeowners if they would be willing to let Harvest Sacramento harvest their fruit. He also said the group is trying to create an urban food forest map to keep track of the number and type of fruit trees in Sacramento.

"It's a service for homeowners, taking unused and unwanted fruit," said Courtney Cagle, an Americorps Vista member working at the Sacramento Food Bank. "It's taking a resource that's already available, that would go to waste, and instead we turn it into healthy, nutritious food for people who can't afford it."

She said that the 1,300-plus pounds of fruit will begin to be distributed at the food bank Monday.

South Land Park resident Juliet Rice found out about the harvest from her son, Miles Tsue, a junior at McClatchy High School. The event was one of the community service options that McClatchy requires as part of its Humanities and International Studies program, and a number of high school volunteers showed up.

"It's a wonderful hands-on, real-world service that can go directly to the people who need it," said Rice. "I'm happy (the fruit) will go directly to the food bank, otherwise it would just go to waste."

Added Waimen Yip, another parent of a McClatchy High student: "You're helping the homeowner and the people getting food."

Homeowners seem to agree. While harvesting a grapefruit tree at one house, a neighbor asked Harvest Sacramento volunteers if they could harvest her lemon tree. The group accepted the offer.

Another homeowner explained how Harvest Sacramento helped her.

"My husband planted the (orange) tree 20 years ago and it gives good fruit, but he recently passed away and it's been really hard to do yard work," said 60-year-old Rosemary Sanchez. "When these people came, I thought, "This is a godsend. This is all good: It's a way of sharing with others and they're always welcome back next year."

For more information, visit harvestsacramento.wordpress.com.