Trash Can Potatoes

Our entire yard is a hill, from the street, past the house and down into the woods.  As a result, there is absolutely no flat land that I can turn into a garden, so I have to be creative when it comes to planting my vegetables.

Last year I decided I wanted to try and plant some potatoes.  I bought some fabric like bags from Gardener's Supply.  We planted the seed potatoes, the plants came up, sprouted flowers and the plants died like they were supposed to.  Turned the bags upside down, eager to see all the potatoes we grew and ... nothing.  Sorry, we found one potato.  One.

This year I searched the web and found all sorts or articles and blog posts about growing potatoes in a trash can.  Hmmm.  Seemed easy enough.  I went to Menard's and scoured the trash can aisle for the cheapest one I could find and bought quite a few bags of their 1.25 topsoil.  We bought the seed potatoes from Theisen's. 

David drilled holes in the bottom of each trash can for drainage.  I put one bag of topsoil in each trash can and then spread the seed potatoes out.  One trash can has Yukon Gold and the other has Kennebec:

I covered the potatoes with another bag of topsoil, spread between the two trash cans so they weren't buried so deep.  As they started to grow, I put more top soil in, making sure to leave about 3 inches of the plants exposed:

It has been about two months, and the plants are now over the top of the trash cans.  Both trash cans have been topped off with bags of top soil.  It'll be interesting to see how many, if any, potatoes we get: