Once potatoes start sprouting.....well, they ideally need to be green chitted then while the sprouts are 3/4 inch long so that they remain short and stocky. I have seen the potatoes hold pretty well for a month after chitting if left out in the light. If they are refrigerated, they will kind of hold for a while. If the sprouts are broken off and the potatoes are kept in the dark and refrigerated, I don't know about them then. This post was edited by wayne_5 on Sun, Feb 2, 14 at 19:39

Planted on St. Patrick's day with only minimal chitting, mine took about 3-4 weeks to show up this year. Yukon Gold were the slowest at 28 days and Red Norland the fastest at 22 days. Dakota Pearl, Norkotah Russet, and Kennebec were in-between. All are growing well and between 18"-24" tall now.

Is the hole really a problem? You could always plant something else there, like a carrot or spinach. Or you could get a small potato from the store and plant that there. I know we're not supposed to use store potatoes, but I have with no ill effects. I've never tried to split a growing seed potato. Perhaps the Butte is just very slow to sprout.

The UFL chart has the last date for central as Feburary and the southern as January. I would give it a shot if you are in the northern part of 10A, as long as you have spare room to experiment. I was shopping for potato seed last fall and found that the big outfits have no idea when we should plant. They all want to ship way to late and they are not too good at special order shipping. I found left over 2012 seed that was available for immediate shipment from Natural Gardening. They were clearing them, so those are all gone now. I kept them in the fridg until last week. I will plant next week if my foot heals up enough to dig. They are starting to sprout quite nicely. I think that you could hold the seed until you fall planting time, but your fridg is meant for short term food storage rather than long term seed holding. They may not make it to September. You might try an internet search for seed potato and look up some smaller organic outfits. You might get them to ship early, or hold back some seed for fall planting. I've had fantastic luck dealing with organic family farms. They have been genuinely interested in the oddball planting times we have this far South. Larry