I may be guilty of playfully tantalizing you and others, but I am deadly serious about the subject.
I want to shift the paradigm of growing potatoes in limited areas. The barrel, tire, grow bag, bucket, and other containers are all part of it. If I can get my act together, I will get some help to produce a series of PDF infomercials about how to construct some devices and suggest varieties or TPS to go along with them. I could talk about variations in the soil media and maybe even provide a special organic formula of unique nutrients to get started on a project.
I suppose I should take photographs and videos of many example of structures and varieties with time lapse shots. I may start out modestly and grow the project as necessary. If I can't make my own variety creations an important part of the effort, I would not continue.
No reason why we can't get 10 lbs or more per plant if one does it right. We may even get potatoes like this...
http://img2.allvoices.com/thumbs/eve...-the-giant.jpg
That 8lb 4 oz potato (Kondor) could be a contest challenge. I even have some ideas how to do grow something like this huge single tuber. I need some volunteers in the local area to help me grow out a number of introductory trials. I think my Paint Jar variety would be a good staring point. It grows to over six feet high, very upright with a central stem and with a bit of trellising I could easily make it grow to ten feet or more. It also sets very light in number. Oh, wait a minute, I don't want to give away all my ideas yet.
Some of you may have had some experience with potato grow bag versions. Few of those seem to come with rollup sides for further growth.
My Lumber yard owner friend may have some odd boards from his saw mill, and he has lots of hybrid poplars on his farm. That lumber is not worth much but the split logs could be used in a long trough out in the field supported by two posts dug into the ground at a 45 degree angle. It would have those X;s every so many feet to support the split logs as the soil media is filled in each time a split log is added on both sides. The first to be planted in the vortex would be the indeterminate potato variety. As the boards are added a row of medium maturity tubers could be planted, and so on until the mass of soil is several feet above the original soil line. The last spuds to be planted could be super early potatoes 45 to 75 day maturities. The harvest could begin simply by removing one split rail at a time as needed. More later