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.