Agriculture? Glass? What’s the connection?

Fig. 1. Stained Glass Panel, Labours of the Months (October – breaking up clods and scattering wheat), 1450-1475, England. From Cassiobury Park, Hertfordshire. Source: Commons Wikimedia.

Have you ever thought about how farmers and market gardeners care for “baby” plants, for example, by covering them with a glass cloche to prevent frost damage or simply creating a special climate by sheltering them in a glass greenhouse?

Fig. 2. Growing strawberries in a greenhouse in Japan, 2005. Source: Commons Wikimedia.

When a farmer works late into the evening, the tractor lights go on and they are glass-fronted, but so is the windshield (windscreen) and look at all the glass covering the gauges in that tractor cabin.

Did your grandmother “put up” vegetables and fruit in glass containers (often called “canning”)?

Fig. 3. Girl holding canning jars. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York, USA. Commons Wikimedia.

And when she made jams and jellies, she put them in sealed glass jars that revolutionized the shelf-life of foods. Today, farmers might even use tumbled glass in mulch, but…. that is for another message, so stayed tuned for more.

You can learn more about the International Year of Glass here (but AIMA is the best place to learn about “Glass in Agriculture / Agriculture in Glass.”