Potato tubers CAN be planted out with the long shouts/sprouts attached even if they are 15 inches long. If I do plant them out with those long sprouts..I may lay the sprouts down within the row with the tips just about at ground level. I do that if it is late in the season or if removing the sprouts leave nothing but a horribly flacid tuber remaining. If the tubers are relative firm, removal of those sprouts may not hurt the emergence of the potato vine after all.
Potatoes used for planting should be taken out of complete darkness if you storage temps rise just befor planting time and for me that is about Feb to early March.
A bit of light allows the sprout to be short and fat....low light levels or darkness markes the sprout grow out of control. They are programed to think that if the temps are warm enough they had better grow tall to try to find light even if it means that they have to grow two feet or more. Potato tubers assume that the surface is somewhere opposite of gravity.
I, too, am in a area that just keeps raining and who knows when it will quit long enough to work, rework, or otherwise prepare the soil for making rows. I expect to fight the wet weather for the next six weeks as I have thousands of varieties to plant in many locations. My area rarely has two days in a row without rain. Land plowed one day gets rained on the next day turning the soil into mud or worse.
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