Green Roofs are a great thing. They shade the roof a house, thus lowering the cooling bill, and add greenery to the city. But they are a lot of work to install and can be costly.
So here is my low tech green roof project.
The idea is to place large planters around my flat roof in Brooklyn, drill holes in the bottom of the planters, and plant vine vegetable plants in the holes. I have a water timer and soaker hose system that will water the containers. Then plants will sprawl over the roof and shade the roof while lowering our cooling bill. And we get food from our roof at the same time. neat. Here are some photos to demonstrate the low tech green roof idea.
Large Planters are placed on rubber roofing material
I use a hole saw to open up the bottom of the planter
Here are some winter sqash and cucumber plants I started.
This is the start of about 6 large planters on the roof. Manhattan is on the right in the background.