This is something I'd like to offer for submission to the almanac.
I have long wondered about better ways to hill potatoes for the non-mechanized potato cultivator. Potatoes are an important staple crop, and it would be very good to maximize yields per square foot for the backyard kitchen gardeners and for the small farmer for whom labor is cheaper than machines. Also we should consider that we are going into economic contraction as well as problems with industrial agriculture that might make small scale kitchen gardening using human labor more economically viable and necessary.
So I plant potatoes in a trench and "hill them" with a rake when they are above ground, just enough to fill the trench. Then when they get over a foot high, I loosen the dirt in the walking path next to the potato plants with a spade, put a cardboard box over the potato plant, and then carefuly fill in the box with the loosened soil using a feed scoop. I hold the potato plant up with one hand if necessary, but it's usually not necessary. The dirt fills in around the potato plant quite neatly! It's the ideal hilling of potatoes -- the walls of the cardboard box make hilling potatoes so much better! Throw some bone meal on it, and you are good to go! See the picture above.
I am also liking how cardboard boxes function as "planters." I fold the bottom flaps out, fill the box in with dirt, and either transplant or direct seed into the box filled with dirt. If I am direct seeding something that is hard to sprout like carrots (need loose soil and constant moisture) I put sand/seed starter mix on the top layer, soak it 2x a day, and keep the top flaps of the box folded down. I took a propagation class at UConn and learned that the reason carrot seeds are hard to sprout is that they need loose, moist soil. We got to propagate our stuff in a real propagation room and they were like rectangular pans full of sand and automatic misting thingies overhead to keep the humidity up.
Also, using cardboard boxes as planters and potato hillers make weeding easier. The planter box area is limited space so just hand weed, and what's outside of the planter box can be aggressively weed whacked or flame weeded or scuffle hoed without fear of hurting your crop plants as they are elevated up in the cardboard box. A big problem every gardener faces is the walking path overgrowing the crop plant area, and so your neat rows in spring end up a mass of weeds by July. Cardboard box planters solve this problem quite nicely.
Severine von Tscharner mentioned to me a concern that cardboard boxes have heavy metals. I googled around and found this:
http://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/45093.html
the use of heavy metals has been dramatically reduced; over 97% of inks on boxes are now water-based and non-toxic; and virtually all box plant trimmings (waste from manufacturing) are recycled.
A second innovation I have come up with -- using a Fresnel lens on a stick to burn up pest insects. See this:
http://greenpowerscience.com/FRESNELSHOP/18INCHROUNDSPOT.html
I am able to focus a 1 centimeter beam of hot sun right on the bugs without even approaching a threshold of damage to the plant. Some pinpoint scorchings of leaves or stems here or there does not hurt the plants, but the bugs get roasted very efficiently. You need to wear welding goggles. This a very good method of Integrated Pest Management -- no poisons, no need to constantly purchase more stuff, it's not dangerous. You could have kids walking up and down rows with fresnel lenses frying the pest insects -- pay them what you would have paid to Dow Chemical for pyrethrine. It works great!
Hope you'll consider one or both of these innovations for your almanac!
