I grow veggies but have never grown in a greenhouse. I do agree that pumpkins take up loads of space and probably wouldn't be suited to a greenhouse, but if your folks have a big yard you could start a little pumpkin patch.
I am growing cucumbers, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, musk melon, and sugar baby watermelons in my yard, and herbs. Sprouts and herbs might be the best way to start out slowly, especially in winter, but you could plant some cold weather plants outdoors right now - lettuce, spinach, broccoli. I know there are others, but I've never really grown the cold weather plants myself since I am ready for mums and pansies in the fall, and nothing else!
It is pretty rewarding, even when there are misses. Like my watermelons: sugar babies take up loads of space, are tiny, have ridiculous numbers of seeds. And I have a very difficult time figuring out when they are ripe, so I usually get about 1 watermelon of 'my own' per season that is actually ripe red in the middle and tasty. (They do not keep ripening off the vine.) Still, it's fun and it still seems like a miracle to me when I plant things and they grow. Like the first zucchini I ever grew: I had no idea they grew so QUICKLY. One day they were small, a few days later, I looked under the leaves and they were weird and monstrous, smooth green skin under these huge leaves, like some prehistoric reptile hiding out, wallowing in the hot sun in my back garden. I have a bit of an imagination, but there we go.
I would say the best use of a greenhouse would not be so much to raise hothouse plants with fuel in the winter (unless your folks have a gas well on their property and therefore get 'free' natural gas from it), but to start and nuture seedings or extend the winter season for cold weather crops, the same way cold frames do.
Whatever you choose, good luck! Fresh herbs in the dead of winter are divine, though the only thing I can bring inside is rosemary, as my cats will eat everything else.
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