Our garden mid-summer

Cleaning off freshly harvested garlic!

Up close

Painted flower pots

Kiara working on her garden map

Eggplant flowering

Summer Internship Week One!

The 4-week summer program is off to a great start with 10 fabulous youth and a college intern from Boston College! Below is a group photo in the garden gathered around the pumpkin patch and a few shots from our field trip to First Church Homeless Shelter in Cambridge. More updates coming soon...

Science in the garden

On Tuesday the Amigos school held a Professional Development workshop for teachers focusing on science in the garden. The workshop was developed by the CPSD Science Department to train teachers in using the garden for certain science units. This signifies the first time CitySprouts has influenced Cambridge Public Schools curriculum in a district-wide fashion.


Pictured in front row: Caitlin Rogers, CitySprouts; Jane Hirschi, CitySprouts; Jamillah Bakr, Science Department; Francey Slater, CitySprouts; Lisa Scolaro, Science Department
Back row: Marianne Dunne, Science Department; Dan Monahan, Science Department; Susan Agger, Maynard Ecology Center

4th grade studies weathering & erosion

I took a few photos while the Amigos 4th grade was learning about weathering and erosion in the garden last week. They ran trials on the stream table, set-up an experiment to look at stream speed and examined examples of weathering outside.

Successful garden clean-up

We kicked off the beginning of spring in the garden last week with a clean-up after school. April 8th volunteers came out to help till the soil, turn over rye crop, add compost, prune the herb garden, clear out dead plants and pick up litter. We accomplished a lot and it was great to see everyone's faces again! The next garden event will be Beautification day on Saturday, May 22nd.

Fiddleheads unraveling into ferns pictured:

Check out our video!

Looking back on apple pressing

October was a month of non-stop apple pressing in the school gardens. Classes came out to learn how to make their own apple cider.



To make the apple cider, we used a fruit press. Fruit and cider presses separate fruit solids, such as the skin and seeds, from the fruit juice.

While apple juice is filtered, unfiltered apple juice is called apple cider.





Making cider

1. The first step involved cutting the apples and removing the apple cores.

2. Next, the apples were passed through an apple grinder. This step compresses the apples so that the juice is easier to extract from the solids.

3. The crushed apples were pressed in a cider press. This involved placing the fruit in the juicing cage, laying wooden blocks on top of the apples, and turning the silver ratchet handle to extract the juice.

4. The juice funnels into a the container at the bottom of the press, and we enjoyed the most important step of the process: drinking the cider! It was wonderful to enjoy this 100% fresh and natural apple cider, without any added sugar or preservatives! Read more about the nutritional difference between juice and fruit drinks.

Thanks to Annabelle Ho :)