Too early potatoes

I buy my seed potatoes too early every year, (I'm too impatient, and enthusiastic to get going,) and despite my best efforts at keeping them cool and dry, they always sprout.   This year I had some that had pale, pencil-thick shoots about 6 inches long.   It's been a while since I read any instructions on growing potatoes, but I recall that the standard advice is to remove all of the shoots and let the potato tuber do its thing once it is in the ground.   Well, these shoots looked good and healthy, so I didn't.

On this batch of seed potatoes, I planted the tuber as normal, at the right depth, and let the shoot stick up out of the soil and into the air, just to see what happened.   What happened is that the shoots leafed out, and have turned into the most advanced potato plants that I have.    I have even had to start earthing them up.

Now you can argue that such early growth is vulnerable to late frosts, and you'd be right.   But the frost will only kill the part that's sticking up out of the ground, whereas the usual advice kills the entire sprout.  I think my new approach is better.