Break the sprouts off and plants as usual.

Some say break off shoots, others say just plant them. In other words, whatever you do, make sure you plant them....and they will grow.

Sprouts are not roots - at 6" it should be obvious whether they are leaf or root - dont plant them up side down, that will not make them happy.

Do both!

Plant some with the 6" sprouts and plant some with them broken off. Then get back to us in a few months and let us know the results!

break the sprouts off??? WHY?

plant them you have a head start then, the 'tater farmers on the jersey island (near england) chit(that is sprout their 'taters), they like the shoots around 6"s long, they the potato growers say they get a quicker crop.

over here we can't buy them early enough to chit them so we plant in hope as a 'tater with at least buds tells us it will grow, we also use store potato that have chitted in the fridge.

but as for breaking grow off, got me lost.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens instant potato patch

Exactly! I would never intentionally break off a shoot. It's hard enough to keep the fragile shoots FROM breaking off. Roots? I hear people talking all about potato roots. Yeah, maybe they have small roots, but I thought the potatoes WERE the roots. When my potatoes sprout, all I see is leaf/plant shoots, and NO roots. Anybody ever harvested a potato with a big root system hanging from it??

Well I know I'm a bit of an idiot about advanced gardening, so although I know how to plant and harvest things, I certainly don't always know the right terms to call parts by, so I wasn't sure if they were roots or sprouts. :-) I've seen plenty of potato plants, but frankly the sprouts coming off of old potatoes don't look to me like much of ANYthing that a potato plant makes, unless the same growths would just look drastically different if they'd been grown in an environment of dirt and sunlight instead of a box. :-)

Thanks for the input, everybody, I appreciate it! I think I might leave the shoots on-- should I cover them completely or allow them to stick partially above ground?

I'd definitely bury them below ground a few inches.

I had a bunch of potatoes too small to use in a bucket in the basement. They sprouted and were 3 - 8" long by the time I figured I'd just stick them in and see what happened. They seem happy - most have sprouted and the leaves look as vigorous as our prolonged dry cold spring permits. the sprouts are leafy, so point them up.