4 Simple Steps to Grow a Hundred Pounds of Potatoes in a Barrel
 

Who knew, you can actually get a hundred pounds of potatoes out of a barrel. Awesome. :) I wonder how much larger the potatoes at the bottom are than the ones on the top...

4 Simple Steps to Grow a Hundred Pounds of Potatoes in a Barrel | greenUPGRADER

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This really only works best if you otherwise have poor soil, otherwise growing them normally tends to work best as potato roots, like all roots can spread in every direction many feet allowing them to get water and nutrients.
My mom tried this only with tires stacked up, the potatoes were spread out but not as many nor as big as the normal hills.

not all types of potato will keep producing as you bury it deeper. I don't remember which but either early or late varieties don't do it.

I do all my potatoes in ground but I also have close to 1000 sqft of garden space. 50 feet of row got me about 180 lbs this year.

100lbs of potatoes sure sounds delicious, but can you do this with Russets?

I do this with plastic bags from peat moss/Sunshine Mix that I use for my nursery growing. I put some good garden soil in the bottom, than start adding mulch - shredded leaves, partially rotted straw, hay or whatever from the chicken pen. As the spuds grow, I add more around the stems. I didn't get the huge harvest I was hoping for, but at least they didn't have scab! Then when they're done, you dump out the bag, collect the spuds and let the chickens scratch the leftovers and mix it in to the garden.

i tried this recently and got absolutely beautiful plants. however, when we dumped the bin there were no potatoes.

any ideas on what i could have done wrong?

Great plants with absolutely no spuds? Could be too much nitrogen giving the plant lots of green growth ignoring the rest. Normally you'd get some mostly smaller potatoes though. I've never had complete failure. The other thing that gave me very few or small potatoes was a lack of light. they do best in full sun. My good crops come where they get sun up to sun down direct sun.

I think I may try this this year. My now useless water barrel which is cracked on the bottom may work well.