Roof Garden: Trees ?

I've seen several trees peeking over the lips of roof gardens throughout Chicago this winter. I'm wondering what trees make good candidates for containers on roofs. It seems like it's not too tough to find one to leave out during the spring/summer/fall, but are there any that can handle overwintering when there is quite a bit of exposure of sun and wind?

I'm looking for something that could survive the winter outside in say a 3' wide by 2-2.5' deep homemade wooden planter. Thanks !

I've had spruce (dwarfs) in large planters on my roof and I've had a friend that had a small tree on his roof top. Although I can't give you specific varieties that would work best, I can tell you that you'll need to insulate your planter and move it out of the wind (if possible) or blanket it in the winter.

We had large stell containers built and I insulated mine by using 1/2" styrofoam insulation panels from home depot. It worked great and my dwarf spruce did extremely well and bounced back quickly after the winters. Just line your planter with squares of this insulation and then fill in with dirt. Make sure your planter will drain and then mulch on top to retain water.

To keep this more on the food front, please let us know if you find any fruiting trees that would do well here, in containers especially. Thanks.

on a similar note... i'm kind of designing some planters myself and was debating on materials...

did you use the styrofoam as the actual liner, or did you use plastic too, or did you put it in a pot then?

i'm debating what to do and was going to use that pink foamular or something similar ... they actually sell a stronger one than what's on the shelf at home depot--which can be special ordered, it's not much more expensive.. was debating on that. i'm pretty sure it would have to be painted at the top since i don't think it takes UV exposure well, but i wouldn't want the lip visible anyway...

The Gardening board is still new, of course, and there's a bit of learning curve with anything new, but we're really trying to keep this board devoted to edible gardening, lest we expand our scope beyond our capacity to keep up with it.

So fruit trees are on topic, but other sorts are best researched elsewhere.

Thanks, and good luck!

Aaron,
for the moderators

tyrus wrote:I've had spruce (dwarfs) in large planters on my roof and I've had a friend that had a small tree on his roof top. Although I can't give you specific varieties that would work best, I can tell you that you'll need to insulate your planter and move it out of the wind (if possible) or blanket it in the winter.

Aaron Deacon wrote:The Gardening board is still new, of course, and there's a bit of learning curve with anything new, but we're really trying to keep this board devoted to edible gardening, lest we expand our scope beyond our capacity to keep up with it.

Excellent point, Aaron, and I agree completely...though some varieties and portions of the spruce plant are edible:

Young male catkins of Engelmann's spruce are edible raw or cooked. They can be used as a flavoring. The immature female cones are edible cooked. The central portion, when roasted, is sweet and syrupy. The cones are about 5 cm long. The inner bark can be dried, ground into a powder and then used as a thickener in soups etc. or added to cereals when making bread. It could be an emergency food when all else fails. The seed is edible raw. The seed is about 2-4 mm long and is small and cumbersome to use. A refreshing tea, rich in vitamin C, can be made from the young shoot tips.

http://montana.plant-life.org/sample/spruce01.htm

I found this article, although somewhat dated, to be interesting regarding fruit and nut trees that may be suitable for rooftop/container gardening.

yah you can get dwarf varieties of just about anything these days...

we've had a dwarf banana since last year, it actually does really well, but hasn't produced any fruit yet.

i think the climate/watering is a bigger issue than the fact that they're trying to be grown in containers

The Chicago Botanic Garden has an article online about how to espalier apple treesfor container gardening. I've always wanted to do this, myself - they have some outdoors at Garfield Conservatory that make up kind of a living fence. Unfortunately, my garden space is too limited even for a dwarf espalier (ed?) apple tree...

Hi,

Once your dwarf banana fruits, then that is the end of the line for the banana. I read some years ago, the banana is not considered a tree. It is more like a stalk of corn who lives to yield an ear of corn, then dies. Except in this case, it yields a bunch of bananas. You will have to double check, but after fruiting it is common cut it down to the ground and the cycle begins again.

How big is a dwarf banana plant?

Regards,

dddane wrote:on a similar note... i'm kind of designing some planters myself and was debating on materials...

did you use the styrofoam as the actual liner, or did you use plastic too, or did you put it in a pot then?

i'm debating what to do and was going to use that pink foamular or something similar ... they actually sell a stronger one than what's on the shelf at home depot--which can be special ordered, it's not much more expensive.. was debating on that. i'm pretty sure it would have to be painted at the top since i don't think it takes UV exposure well, but i wouldn't want the lip visible anyway...

I agree that this board should focus on edible planting and trees but to answer your question about planters and how I insulated them, I've included a few pics.

My Father-in-Law is a general contractor and had these boxes built by a HVAC contractor. It's basic HVAC galvanized steel and they hold up really well in our climate. He had two square and two rectangular boxes built. As you can hopefully see, there is a lip on the top of the boxes. Since these a a bit flimsy and I wanted to insulate them (for the winters), I put a 3/8" sheet of the pink foamular insulation (from Home Depot) on all sides, then I placed a 1/4" sheet of plywood, over the insulation. This tucked under the lip and gave me both insulation and structure for the heavy planters (not pictured here due to a recent move). I then filled the bottom with styrofoam (just broken pieces from furniture boxes, etc.) to lower the weight and filled the rest with potting mix, then mulch. This should give you a nice planter for a small tree.

I would be interested if you could plant a apple or cherry varietal in here. If anyone has had success, please let us know. Thanks...

so you put the plywood between the foamular and the galv steel, or the foamular is between the plywood and steel?

great pics... thanks!

dddane wrote:so you put the plywood between the foamular and the galv steel, or the foamular is between the plywood and steel?

great pics... thanks!

Foamular between the steel and plywood, so the plywood was touching the potting mix.

I think that is a good planter that is made up of galvanizes steel. It might have more life span that some other planters. I am more preferred to a home made planter.