What Can I Grow in a Greenhouse?

Though there are certainly crops that commonly lend themselves to healthy greenhouse production, like tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, orchids, chrysanthemum, and roses, you will find that today’s greenhouse growers are branching out into all different kinds of agriculture.

Livestock

Livestock housing is becoming a popular use for greenhouses. The additional light levels, benefits of natural ventilation, and other climate control options lend themselves quite well to healthy livestock. There are GGS freestanding greenhouses being used in North America and Asia for free range chickens and free range turkeys. One of our gutter connected greenhouse customers raised Llamas. Pig and Cow Farmers have been less inclined to use a traditional greenhouse structure, but the GGS Tasco Dome buildings provide excellent buildings for these animals around the world. These fabric covered buildings have many similar characteristics of a greenhouse while providing a more durable fabric cover for circumstances when the light is not needed to aid in greenhouse gardening, greenhouse farming, and greenhouse crop production.

Aquaculture

Greenhouse aquaculture has been another area that has experienced considerable production growth by using the greenhouse climate to optimize the growing environment for greenhouse farming. Fish, tilapia, or arctic char, generally in combination with a water plant like seaweed, is the most common greenhouse farmed aquaculture crop, but shrimp has also been shown to be very successful when grown in a greenhouse. For aquaculture, the favorite greenhouse is a Widespan gutter connected house with tall under gutter heights. This enables good environmental control under a square footage capable of housing large production water tanks for greenhouse crop production.

Fruit

In Japan, we have growers using GGS poly gutter connected greenhouses for greenhouse gardening with strawberry production, and peach trees. Fig trees are often commonly harvested in greenhouses, though primarily as a small-scale hobby greenhouse.

Medicine

New medical research has brought rise to Biosimilars, plants that are specifically grown for medicinal benefits in greenhouses, and no, I am not referring to Cannabis, though that is also a crop grown legally in greenhouses in several countries. Biosimilar plant production requires research style greenhouse facilities in order to meet the GMP requirements of the drug companies for greenhouse farming.

Biofuel

Algae is another crop beginning to make serious inroads in greenhouse crop production particularly as advanced fuel research continues to measure and improve ways to replace fossil fuels.

Though this post is just scratching the surface of what is grown inside greenhouses today, hopefully it gives an idea of the wide range of capabilities a properly controlled greenhouse environment can be used for greenhouse gardening and greenhouse farming. With this list, we're just getting started. If you have experience with any creative greenhouse crops or other uses we would love to read them in the comments below!