I think I fixed my problems

Here is a picture of the railing I installed. It may not look like much but without it disaster could happen. The green roof goes over the edge. Here I am replanting one of my 100 trays. You can see there is potting soil on top. This is much heavier than the "gaiasoil" which is almost unbelievably light. I should mention an important point about weight. All the information about putting in a green roof starts with the disclaimer "get an engineer to check the load bearing abilities of your roof." What I did instead was remove 3 layers of hot tar roofing. I'm pretty sure these layers were heavier than the load I added with the green roof. Also my house has a crawl space attic so there is no load put upon the joists from underneath. This blog is not a set of directions on how to do this. It's what I hope will work. There are a lot of places on the web which have all sorts of directions. Here is a picture of the replanted roof. Now I just have to get the plants established before winter. The basic advise is water them once a day for the first two weeks and then once a week for the first six months. So that's my plan. I'll check back her in about two weeks if nothing else goes wrong. Then I hope to down load a few images of the roof once a month. This is a picture of what I think is Sedum Angelica. I bought it and 9 more at Lowes for a dollar each. They were in pots that said annuals.but their information cards said they were sedum spurium. Of course the people at lowes knew nothing. Usually a sedum this big would cost 5 to 10 dollars. They were marked a buck because all the annuals were marked down . This is the type of thing I can't resist. when I got home I researched what their label said sedum spurium. That definitely is not what this plant is. I then typed in sedum and then clicked in images and just kept looking at pictures of sedum until I came to sedum Angelica. So that's what I think it is until it turns brown and dies in november. I'm sticking with that.

My First Big Mistake

This is me redoing the trays . So the "gaiasoil" doesn't blow away

Well I thought the roof was all set. Some of the creeping yellow sedum cuttings I first got were growing lots of roots. The first part of this project was done. Then came a big rain storm with heavy winds. That's how I first saw my problem. The "Gaia soil"was blowing all over the place. I emailed Eric at the Gaia Institute and told him of my concern with this soil blowing around. He wrote back I think amazed and chagrined that I did not realize that "Gaia soil" is a sub soil. He explained the process for a 3" extensive roof: 2" of Gaia Soil" then a piece of burlap, and finally 1" of a nutrient rich soil. So I had to replanted and remake 100 trays that I had already planted. Live and learn.

Another feature I have added is a railing at the bottom of the roof. During this wind and rain storm all the trays moved about 2 or 3 inches down ward. Luckily I had about a foot before they reached the edge of the roof. The railing is 2 pieces of 1 5/8 x 1 5/8 metal stud I had down in my basement. I put a 1/2 " spacer with a piece of roofing as a washer then screwed it into the roof, sealing jit with some tar. Last night there was another violent storm with a smattering of hail. The green roof came through beautifully. The potting soil topping stayed in place as did eveything else.

My one big worry now is that some of the cutting, particularly the "chicks and hens" are getting too much water from all the rain. A few of them have died. I think once the plants get settled in they will be fine but august weather tnds to be wet. Sedum like it dry.

Continuing the green roof installation

Here is another bunch of creeping sedum. This package contains 400 cuttings. The person Ibought it from on ebay also suggested that I should divided the cutting if it was longer than ten inches. she said they grow better if they are short. So I included scissors in my tool kit This is the almost completed green roof. I have about ten trays left to go. But surprisingly I have about 20 bags of soil left. I guess I'm committed to doing more next year. I really don't want to do more now. I want to see how this goes this fall, over the winter, and especially next spring when these sedum should really start to fill in. This is a close up view. I think I have about 25 different kinds of sedum up here. It's hard to keep track because I bought some lots on ebay that were just labeled "20 assorted cuttings" Here is a list of the stuff I bought and the cost.

100 trays from Growers Supply-$120.00 2 cubic yards of Gaia Soil from the Gaia Institute $240.00 1 20'x 15' 20 mil. pond liner from Fishfarmhatchery on ebay. this is the root barrier. $60.00 I spent a total of $255.00 on plants. I'll list them next. This totals $675.00 This comes out to about $3.40 a sq.ft. The plants I definitely bought in a haphazard manner. I didn't plan on doing it this way but I got sucked into buying cutting on ebay. hopefully it will work out. I originally planned on only buying plugs from an established green roof nursery like Mountain Crest Gardens or Emery Knoll. But I think this was more fun. I bought stuff on ebay from 5 different people. I bought a total of 8 different listings. This includes 700 cuttings of creeping yellow sedum from 5 different lots. I spent about $65.00 on this stuff although it probably makes up over half the space. I also bought 6 different listings of other stuff on ebay.Three of these were Sempervivium or commonly known as "chicks and hens." But the other 3 lots were assorted sedum cuttings. The total for these 6 lots was about $70.00 Then I bought 1 tray of 84 sedum plugs from Mountain Crest Gardens for $78.00. and finally I just bought at half price 12 sedum plants at Lowes for $10.00. I also bought two packets of seeds for $4.00 This is a picture of my house in Jersey City NJ. So you can get some idea of where you are when you see pictures of the roof. This is a flat of 84 plugs of various types of sedum. It came from Mountain Crest Gardens which is in California. It cost about $78.00 including shipping. there are 12 different types of sedum. The next picture is the list they sent me. This is an out of focus picture of a bunch of little bags. Each bag contains a different type of sedum. It was very enjoyable having all these little bags of plants. These came from "Mom's chicks and Hens" It sells on ebay. This is what was in one of those little bags. these are cuttings of Dragons Blood Sedum

Starting the green roof

These are picture of me and my family creating our own extensive green roof. This means the soil is only three inches deep And you can only really plant sedum. I live in Jersey City NJ. Later I'll include a picture of my row house. It is four stories tall and connected on both sides. This first picture is of a container that is 3" deep and 1'x2'. It is filled with a growing medium called gaia soil. this is some stuff that is specially formulated for green roofs. It's really light. I bought it from the Gaia institute which is on city Island in the Bronx. They have a web site if your interested. The next picture is my wife Barbara transferring some yellow creeping sedum to the container that will sit on the roof. I have 100 of these containers. This is a picture of Barbara filling a container with the soil mixture. My son and I carried 2 cubic yards of this stuff up 4 stories. This is a picture of the beginning of the green roof. Barbara is placing another tray of sedum down. There are about 25 trays down here. Only 75 more to end phase one. Here is another picture of the roof. At this point I'm out of sedum. although i had already ordered more. Here is a picture of some chicks and hens or sempervivium. They are related to sedum. I read that they were put on roofs during the middle ages in Germany. there German name means live forever. This is a picture of Dragons Blood sedum. There are about ten cuttings here. The chicks and Hens came with a root but the other sedum I have got so far are cuttings. you just stick the end of the cutting in the soil and it grows it's own root. This is much cheaper than buying plugs or fully grown plants. Here is picture of most of my roof top. First before I started to put down the green roof i put on a new Bitumen roof. this is a rubber asphalt blend roof that you seal with a torch. However because asphalt is organic roots can grow into it, so I had to put down a root barrier. I used a 20mil thick pond liner . Here is a sideways picture of some of the trays. these are all filled with creeping yellow sedum or Sarmentosum. This is the type of sedum that will fill the majority of my green roof. There are a couple of people who sell cuttings in bunches of 100 on ebay. It seems to be the most economical way to do this. From everything I've read sedum is pretty indestructible. and cuttings are a very reasonable way to propagate it. Here is a picture of 100 of the trays I'm using to do this . they are 3" deep and 1'by2'.Hopefully when the sedum grows in they will hardly be noticeable. This is something else I am trying. This is a pack of sedum seeds. There are 750 seed in a pack. but I think they are pretty tricky to grow. Here are the seeds. I put them into one tray. and covered the tray with saran wrap. They need light, heat, and humidity. Here I am drilling holes in the containers. they were not really meant for this . They are really seed propagation trays . I got the idea for this from some guy in Red Hook who has a blog about his green roof. but they are really cheap. about $100.00 from a place called growers supply. The hole are for drainage. Lets say there is a complete downpour you don't want your tray overflowing with water. Here are some more chicks and Hens.

Here is a big clump of the creeping sedum. It came wrapped in two plastic bags in a box. It's from somebodies back yard in Michigan. Here another look at the cutting. You just pick them out and stick them in the soil. they can grow roots from anywhere they grow a leaf.

These are two picture of Barbara and my son Hank doing just that. Plus adding water Here is a picture of some sedum in my back yard waiting for the rest of my materials to show up.

Well that's all for now to be continued.