Late Summer Planting?

Alright, I'm sure someone has tried this but I had an idea of harvesting a bunch of rhizomes pretty much immediately after harvesting the plants in Late August. So I did.
My 'idea' was they would get a real nice head start and maybe even begin to come out of the ground by October's end.

Well, Some actually DID come out of the ground but the ones that I did dig at a bit have a nice 'bud' growth coming out of the rhizome ( 1 inch maybe ) and minimal root growth down but SOME.

Was this a mistake? I mean can it HURT? My plan is to keep letting them go until end of October and then put 2 or 3 inches of wood chips on top of them ( they are all in mounds 12" X12" ) and possibly around the base too.

I really thought with the warmer weather we have in September and rain ( mud season lol ) that most would get a real nice head start rather than waiting til Spring.

By cutting, you have spurred the rhizome to grow, which normally happens in the spring. The danger is that the rhizome expends most of its energy sending up shoots that aren't exposed to sunlight long enough to return that energy to grow the root mass.

Read around here and you'll see people talking about little to no harvest the first year. That's because it takes the plant 3 to 4 years to establish enough root mass to support the full vigor.

On top of that, a "head start" is not always a good thing. You often want to cut back the shoots that first pop up for various reasons but in particular to get the growth cycle just right. If they start out too early, they will start budding out before the side arms are developed. That really hurts your harvest size.

But, what is done is done so let us know how it turns out.