Not everyone has the luxury of a potato patch in the ground. In my new suburban location with a half-acre "farm" (

) I will have a potato patch. Where I used to be in the city, I couldn't. So I did try growing potatoes in the bottom half of a 50 gallon drum, (actually plastic trash can, the kind you take out to the curb) with plenty of drainage holes added in the bottom and sides. I put a bit of good enriched top soil in the bottom, just a few inches, then my seed potatoes and then a couple more inches of soil. Then after the potato plants wer up and growing, I kept gradually adding more soil.
Here's how potatoes grow:
New potatoes come off the roots, between where your seed potato is and where the plant is. In the ground, they don't have to be hilled up very high, because they can spread out horizontally, but grown in a tub they don't have that luxury.
Here's how they would look in the ground:
But you need to be sure as the potatoes are growing and you are filling the bucket, that you don't fill too fast and you leave your potato plant plenty of leaves. The leaves are what give it the energy to grow and produce those tubers.
What you want is basically good enriched topsoil, but you can mix in a bit of grass clippings (if they don't have chemicals on them) and leaves.
You can definitely grow potatoes that way, but I will say that my potatoes never got very big either, not much more than the golf ball size mentioned. But they tasted really good!