My strategy to keep tubers over winter is to dig up the plants in fall, clean and separate each tuber, then organize the tubers by separating the tubers of each variety into plastic grocery bags with lightly moist soil, then putting those individual bags into a lawn and leaf trash bag and burying it 2.5 feet deep under loose soil covered by leaves and branches to hold the leaves down, back in the shade of the forest. This strategy is used due to necessity.

But the problem is that some of the tubers start eyeing up and stems start to grow in April(inside the buried bags), so I start carefully removing some and re burying the rest til later.

In the mean time I notice that some tubers will sport very thin stems of an inch long or slightly less, but only1.5 to 2mm thick at the base. But other tubers of the same variety will have significantly thicker stems of 5-6mm or slightly more. So, can it be said that the thicker stemmed tubers Will produce thicker, stronger or healthier plants?

How about tuber size? I have some Citron de Cap tubers that are very long and thick, but others that are significantly thinner and shorter. I see it in other varieties too. Will smaller tubers be any less healthy than larger ones?