I am starting a research project and step number one seems to be learning the soil requirements for various plants and probably specifically for vegetable garden plants. I am hoping to find out about shallow soil plantings and possibly hydroponically (sp?) grown gardens. I think Japanese gardening might be relevant... I'm trying to come up with light weight plantings that require very little soil depth.

If anyone feels the urge to help me find good online sources I would appreciate it. Also if you know of key resources from the library, that would work as well.

I'm in Chicago so sources can't be directed to Southern Californian climate or anything like that.

This article is about roof gardening but it has Soil Characteristics for shallow plantings. Perhaps it will help you.

I also found some information on hydroponics:
Principles of Hydroponics Gardening

Hydroponics as a Hobby Check out the Requirements for Plant Growth link on this site.

A quick overview of indoor gardening with hydroponics

Isn't Chicago one of the leaders in roof gardening and/or green roofs?

It must be DG cuz I sure did find a lot on roof gardening in Chicago! I'd never even heard of that before today.

From Wikipedia -

Green Roof

Green roofs are becoming common in Chicago, as well as Atlanta, Portland, and other cities, where regulations to combat the urban heat island encourage their use. In the case of Chicago, the city has passed codes offering incentives to builders who put green roofs on their buildings. The Chicago City Hall green roof is one of the earliest and most well known examples of green roofs in the United States; it was planted as an experiment to determine the effects a green roof would have on the microclimate of the roof. Following that and other studies, it has now been estimated that if all the roofs in a major city were "greened," urban temperatures could be reduced by as much as 12 degrees. [7]
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One of the largest expanses of extensive green roof is to be found in the USA, at Ford Motor Company's River Rouge Plant, Dearborn, Michigan, where 42,000 square metres (454,000 ft²) of assembly plant roofs are covered with sedum and other plants. Other well-known American examples include Chicago’s City Hall and the Gap headquarters in San Bruno, Calif. The cities of Chicago, Atlanta and Portland, Ore., also boast numerous green roofs.[11

Take a look around, Georgia.

Well what do you know? They are becoming common in the very city I live in! And here I thought a green roof was merely a color option

quote:

Isn't Chicago one of the leaders in roof gardening and/or green roofs?

Yes, and I am considering getting into it with a gardener friend.

Thanks everyone for your replies.

I have successfully grown potted plants in a mixture of 1:1 ratio of packing peanuts (yes that Styrofoam stuff) and composted material.

The "pot" was a 55 gallon plastic milk drum cut in half - since I wanted to have two oleanders on either side of the posts I needed two large containers for $10 for a used dairy container (white plastic) it was “perfect”. I still needed to be able to move them so I mixed the lightest handy material I had (packing peanuts) and buffered the non-nutritive base with nutrient rich “soil” pure compost. I also added things like Naked Ladies (a bulb plant) paper whites (bulbs) tulips (bulbs) Gladiolas (bulbs) and baby tears (ground cover) around the oleanders.

Compost Tea is my method of “feeding” indoor plants – I take a 5 gallon bucket of cool water, throw in a shovelful of compost, stir and let stand 24 hours. I pour out the contents into another bucket with a screen to prevent solids from passing. The resulting brown water is nutrient rich.

ORGANIC gardening is what you need to look at things like successive planting, companion planting, intensive planting – these maximize limited ground space. I have a “small” lad garden, however when I am actually working it I get high yield.

Companion Planting: http://www.gardentoad.com/companionplants.html

Succession Planting: http://www.gardenguides.com/TipsandTechniques/successi.htm

Compost: http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/organicgardening/gh_comp.php

Mulch: http://www.lawnaeration.com/faq/4.2.html

Much of the land grown knowledge is applicable to potted/container crops. http://www.ourgardengang.com/containerveggies.htm

As for the public library and books – there are a lot – I mean seriously a lot of books – most contain basically the same information.