Anyone growing on a green roof?

[flowerweaver]

We will be building a small shed for our donkey as soon as it cools down, and I'm considering a green roof for several reasons. Besides being a fun project, it would give me back some prime growing space that was taken out when the corral was built; it would also muffle the sound of rain and hail which scare him, and give a visual reason for that roof not matching all the others that were recently replaced by insurance after the tornado. I would go with a six inch depth, maybe could grow some greens or herbs. Here's what got me thinking about it.
www.greenroofplans.com/Home.html

[philagardener]

Here in PA, they only grow succulents and tough grasses on green roofs because not much else will make it through the dry spells. Were you planning to water yours?

[flowerweaver]

philagardener Yes, here almost everything must be irrigated.

[walnuttr]

"philagardener Yes, here almost everything must be irrigated."

Add the weight of earth per square metre (about 750 kg / 1650 pounds) for a foot deep, to the basic shed roof framing; I'm guessing that gets into chunky posts and cross-beams and thins the wallet very quickly; Any thinner soil will probably cook the plant roots.
One alternative is a thick layer of grass / straw; otherwise known as thatching; keep the roof slope at about 30 degrees or more to shed the rain (if it ever does ?) and the bundles of straw of diameter about 4 inches, straw about a yard long, onto lashing poles set at foot apart to give three overlapping layers of thatch.
The roof lasts longer if a smoky cooking fire coats the inside of the hut with tar and keeps hungry insects at bay.
Great at gentling the sound of rain, and weathers to an earthy grey colour.
In the highlands of Papua new Guinea, these roofs would last about 10 years if well-smoked and not fired (by the neighbours ).
Long enough for the soil to be depleted and a new hut needed building in a new gardening area.

Maybe the need to constantly build new homes has also led to a culture that does not value "maintenance-work" as highly as in colder / better soil areas of the planet?

[prairiegardens]

At one point I was considering thatching wth cattail leaves, no reason to think it wouldn't work on a roof with a decent pitch. However, the sheer amount that would be needed for a roof of any size was .... daunting .... and for the moment at least, the idea was abandoned.

[Day]

Hm, just spit balling here, but perhaps you could grow a long vining, small fruited squash up the side/back of the shed, by planting it at the base and training the vines up and over? I've been thinking about doing something similar where I live next season, since my backhouse gets blasted by southfacing sun each day and is poorly insulated to begin with. I'm hoping the rampant vines and leaves will keep the sun off the wall. Luckily, the roof's only about 8.5 feet up, so harvest wouldn't need too big of a ladder xD

Keeping the roots at ground level makes watering easier, squash are space gobblers anyway so this gets them out of your other veggies' business, and though any hail you could would probably damage the plants, so would any hail you get when growing them on the ground. You'd probably have to compensate when building to accommodate the weight on the vines, ripe fruit etc., but that should still be a lot cheaper than investing in the lumber to hold many cubic feet of soil. Pest management would be difficult, admittedly.

You'd probably need a squash with long vines but smallish fruit. The longest vines I've grown have been on the maxima squash North Georgia Candy Roaster, but the fruit is huge. I've had really good luck this season with Mini Red Turban from Baker Creek, also a maxima. The vines are pretty long considering the squash vary in size from a bouncy ball to a 'half flat' beach ball. They've been very productive for me too with irrigation; I'll probably have around 25/30 squash by season end on just two plants. The vines are pretty long as well, though since my space is limited so I keep 'flipping' them back on themselves, so I couldn't really give you an accurate length measurement.

[philagardener]

Melons slip from the stem when ripe, so you could just rig up a net at the bottom to catch them!

EZ pickins!

[walt]

I have a couple of friends with earth-sheltered houses.  Both are concrete rooves on concrete walls. with dirt covering the top and the walls except for the south wall, which has windows.
the couple in one of these houses doesn't grow any plants at all, inside or outside.  Their roof went to weeds.  The soil on the roof is about 18 inches deep. and wild pot took it over.  I'm told the wild "ditchweed" as it grows in Kansas is worthless for smoking and is only good for quail food.  The seeds that is.  Weed is a common weed in Kansas.
The other couple put welded wire hog pannels on end from the ground to the roof.  They cover them with greenhouse plastic sheeting in the winter, giving them an 8 foot wide tropical front yard the length of their house.  Not only do they use it as a greenhouse, it also heats their house.  They have propane backup to heat their house, adn wood stove backup to heat the greenhouse space.  They use very little backup heat, mostly the sun.
In the summer, the plastic is rolled up and squash and gourds are planted at the base of the hog pannels,  The squash and gourds climb the pannels, shading the front of the house and producing squash and gourds.  They don't use the gourds.  The squash they use.  And it is relatively cool out under the vines and they often eat lunch there.
On teir roof, the soil is just planted to native plants, buffalo grass, etc.  I'm not even sure how much of it was planted and how much of it just spread from the native prairie that surounds the house.

[steev]

Sounds not too unlike my plans, which are to shade my house east and west with grape arbors, which will drop leaves to allow insolation in Winter; the arbors will be pleasant for hammocks, sitting, or dining, in season; the south side will be covered parking, with solar panels on it for power, thus shading the house from south sun.

The idea of a green roof is attractive, but mine will be galvanized, for water-collection (refer to the post about wood-pallet-pond-liner ponds).

[walt]

I had neighbors who had a galvanized roof and a rain barrel.  The subject came up once and my male neighbor mentioned that his wife's hair was especially nice after she washed her hair in the rain barrel.  We had hard water in our wells.  Very soft in the rain barrels, of course.
Then my female neighbor said that she sometimes bathed in the rain barrel, but only after checking to make sure my car was gone so I wouldn't see.
I hear rainbarrels are also good for collecting water for gardens, but who needs another reason?

[steev]

I'm sure your neighbor had no reason to fear you'd be scoping her in the barrel, unless she is "attractive"; it's a tad weird how people get sensitive about being seen "au natural" as they begin to feel "un-attractive"; possibly sad. really.

[walt]

She was less beautiful I suppose, than she had been 40 years earlier. But still nice to look at. And very intelligent and an excellent gardener. A good neighbor.

[steev]

There you go; as we age, the notion that we'll be "seen", rather than "looked at", can be troubling; such a socially-determined difference. In my youth, I liked being "seen"; nowadays, whoever "looks at" me is responsible for their own damned visual damage.