It’s been somewhat of a struggle to get the living roof on our earthbag dome established. The steep sides make it quite challenging, because water runs off quickly and washes away the soil and nutrients. This causes dry areas to develop. As you can see from the early Mother Earth News photos, the grass didn’t look very good the first few months.
But finally after about two and a half years the living roof is really taking off. This is the best it’s ever looked. It’s improved quite a bit in the last four months during the latest rainy season. I’m hoping dry areas are a thing of the past now that the grass is tall and totally filled in. It’s hard to tell by the photo, but the grass is now dense and 8”-12” tall, with 36” tall vetiver grass on the backside. The vetiver shoots to 6’ high if we let it. And our bamboo in back (visible in the photo), which we planted at the same time we built the dome, is as tall as a two-story building.
Wow, where is this dome located? Your grass is beautiful! How much rain do you get in the rainy season and does this cause problems with your dome roof leaking any?
The dome is in NE Thailand. Not sure how much rain we get, but this area is considered the dry part of Thailand. No roof leaks so far. We took a chance and used layers of 6 mil plastic sheeting instead of rubber membrane (EPDM). This lowered the cost significantly.
Maybe a more drought-resistant grass would help? There’s ‘eco-grass’ which is a blend of different hardy grasses.
We used a hardy, drought resistant variety that’s used along highways, etc. but it was still difficult.