Winter Plant Profile and Greenhouse Growing

Winter plant profile and Greenhouse Growing

This article was first published in the March 2012 issue of the Mountain Chronicle


Greetings folks! Spring is just around the corner even though winter never really arrived. On the tail end of what they usually call winter I’ll bring you the winter plant profile and I’ll talk about a greenhouse project I recently finished.

Last summer I began offering seasonal plant profiles, highlighting edible perennials that are either planted, grown or are harvested during the current season. The summer plant profile was Sunchokes and the fall plant profile was artichokes. Now I’ll give you the rundown on rhubarb (Rheum x cultorum). Strawberry rhubarb pie is a classic that tastes better with fresh strawberries and rhubarb from your own garden. Rhubarb is also included in many savory dishes and adds a unique flavor. According to Dave Jacke, in his book Edible Forest Gardens vol. II, rhubarb has excellent leaf stalks and is an excellent medicinal which acts as a tonic and also holds antibacterial properties, acts as a purgative, stimulates bile and pancreas secretions and has several other benefits. It’s important to note that the leaves and roots are poisonous due to the high amounts of oxalic acid. Late winter and early spring is the time to plant bare root rhubarb, available at your local nursery. You can also start rhubarb from seed, but don’t expect it to be productive for several years. My rhubarb plants are beginning to emerge and are offering some of the first splashes of color on the landscape. Their beautiful young leaves emerge with yellows, greens and reds and signal the coming of spring and warmer weather. One great benefit to rhubarb is that it is deer resistant. The poisonous leaves won’t get browsed and the plants thrive where others get mowed to the ground. You can plant it in full sun or partial shade and they are happy in moist to somewhat dry soils. Rhubarb can come in variations of colors from green, yellow, red depending on the cultivar. Once rhubarb is established they are very productive. Plants should be divided, as they get older so the crowns don’t crowd each other.


I just recently finished putting a greenhouse together near Angels Camp. There are two purposes. The first is to raise vegetable starts to plant out this spring, summer, and fall. The other is to house about 100 shitake logs. The humidity in California is a little low for outdoor commercial mushroom cultivation. So we thought that if we grew the mushrooms inside of a greenhouse we could create a better environment for them. After looking at several prefabricated hoop frames and other greenhouse kits we decided to put together our own PVC hoop house. So two of us set out to put together this inexpensive and easy to construct greenhouse. With a quick search on the web we saw that there were a lot of people that described their process online. We checked out what we liked and didn’t like about each particular design and went full steam ahead. We squared out a 12’ x 28’ footprint.
Every 4 feet we pounded a 3’ piece of rebar halfway into the ground. For those that want to build one where there is a snow load 2’ spans will work. Once we got both sides finished we stuck 20’ x 1” PVC on the rebar, bending them to slide on the rebar at both ends. We put a purlin on each side to make it one unit and to attach the plastic to. The north side has a baseboard at the bottom to attach to the plastic to. Now we had a tunnel to put some greenhouse plastic on. We created some simple framing to put doors in on each end and the plastic was ready to go. Rather than staple right into the greenhouse plastic we screwed pieces of wood into the purlins, the baseboard, and the framed ends to pin the plastic in place. After all said and done the greenhouse cost less than $500 in parts. A smaller one for a backyard gardener would cost significantly less. A 28-foot long greenhouse is fairly large. There is plenty enough room for starting seedlings to plant out on a small farm. We’re hoping to be able to put the mushroom logs underneath seedling tray tables to save and utilize more space inside.
Greenhouse gardening is fun and productive. Cold and sunny winter days can be hot humid and tropical inside of a greenhouse. I know having three on site at Love Creek Permaculture is a blessing and we are able to accomplish a lot more with them. Without a greenhouse I wouldn’t have tomatoes both fruiting and seedlings just emerging. I wouldn’t be able to have pepper seedlings or giant pepper plants with ripening red fruit on them. I am getting hooked on greenhouse growing and wonder what I could do with a very large greenhouse…. I have some ideas.