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[Hans Lemurson]

dfhack's tiletypes aside, in most cases you could cast obsidian wall 1z above the boulder/pebble, then dig away the obsidian wall (reverting it into soil floor), then cave in that soil floor on top of the boulder; Tested in 44.09, caved in black sand floor to get peat floor where pebbles were. However it is worth noting that inspecting the tile with probe afterwards tells that it still nonetheless kept its "no grow" tag (and nothing grew there in the time 48/50 tiles of dirt road regrassed).

Btw, in same version testing, Subterranean/Inside/Above Ground tiles (stockpile tiles on unretire) failed to grow any moss after cavern revealing. Revealed and refloored soil grew aboveground grasses.

Wait, so are you saying that new stone created in mid-air, when mined away, will leave a soil floor behind?  And then you collapsed that floor down on top of the pebbles, and the pebbles were replaced with that soil?

[Thisfox]

I'm not certain if this will help, but I just made a many z's above-ground farm.

I built a glass-roofed fortress several z above ground. The glass is all clear glass blocks built in the {C} - {f} type of floor. I then had trees grow up from the ground level inside the glass roofed fort, and eventually they started hitting the glass ceiling (I had not planned for this, it was just an unexpected event). Anyhow, when a tree branch goes through a glass floor from below, that makes an explosion (and a pause, and an announcement of "Something has collapsed on the surface!!") and after the dust clears, sand appears (broken glass is sand), and that sand floor is on top of the tree branches. It stays there, dwarves can walk across it as if it were the glass, and eventually starts growing natural grasses and plants I would usually expect to see on ground level. I did not expect to have a successful rooftop garden, but we are now harvesting grain plants on the roof of the fortress, growing in the sand that is basically broken glass on top of my greenhouse roof.

[Hans Lemurson]

Interesting.  So you're getting tree-top farming soil created by tree-branches growing through a barrier floor?  I am assuming Clear Glass isn't special, and that any flooring material would work.

Do you ever get soil appearing on branches above places where the surface is stony?
Even more importantly, when you cut a tree down, does the soil floor fall to the earth, or does it vanish?

[Thisfox]

I expect the clear glass is very relevant, as sand is deconstructed glass. Using a rock or a brick to make the floor might not work. I have had trees under roofs before, but I have never had this happen until I made a glass floor. When I cut the tree down, the sand and the grass remain, and dwarves continue to gather from it, unless the tree was too big and takes down the whole bloody roof (somewhat expensive experiment). It definitely needs more experimentation: I recommend making some glass floors above places you can grow trees (at least 2-z above the ground, saplings won't grow into trees under a single z-level) and then seeing what happens when the trees continue to grow.

[Fleeting Frames]

That it happened to be sand is purely coincidence, because the game internal structure doesn't support non-layer soil materials.
It's not the first I've heard of the phenonema, but I don't know a way to quickly and certainly replicate it.

dfhack's tiletypes aside, in most cases you could cast obsidian wall 1z above the boulder/pebble, then dig away the obsidian wall (reverting it into soil floor), then cave in that soil floor on top of the boulder; Tested in 44.09, caved in black sand floor to get peat floor where pebbles were. However it is worth noting that inspecting the tile with probe afterwards tells that it still nonetheless kept its "no grow" tag (and nothing grew there in the time 48/50 tiles of dirt road regrassed).

Btw, in same version testing, Subterranean/Inside/Above Ground tiles (stockpile tiles on unretire) failed to grow any moss after cavern revealing. Revealed and refloored soil grew aboveground grasses.

Wait, so are you saying that new stone created in mid-air, when mined away, will leave a soil floor behind?  And then you collapsed that floor down on top of the pebbles, and the pebbles were replaced with that soil?

Almost, but not quite. When I collapsed said soil floor down, the pebbles got replaced with different soil (as the layer material for soil was different zlevel down).