Sowing Runner beans and Potatoes

Could someone tell me the best time to plant Runner Beans and Potatos,I will be planting the potato's in potato bags.I used potato bags last year because I was fed up getting potato's full of holes and there were no holes just nice clean potato's

 

1. I also forgot to ask about sowing times for shallots

 

The runner beans I have in pots are now well grown and wondered if it is ok to plant them out now

 

I think it's still too early but as with all this planting out you have to watch the weather, one ground frost and you could lose the lot.
What is your rough location.

 

Burgess Hill.West Sussex

 

I think it's still a little bit early, unless you can put them in a sheltered spot. I think the danger now is they'll be soft, but if you don't plant them soon their roots are going to run out of space in the pots. In my experience, starting them off early indoors is often futile. They usually still grow when planted out but I find direct sown ones often overtake the early starters and start cropping around the same time.

The other issue is if you plant them out today, they'll be slug eaten by tomorrow unless you put pellets down. Whereas for reasons I can't fathom, the direct sown ones seem to fare better.

If you do sow direct, remember the old poem:

One for the mouse,
One for the crow,
One to rot,
And one to grow.

 

The direct sown ones will be tougher and less prone to slug attack, indoor sown ones are often very soft unless hardened off for a couple of weeks or more.

 

I think if I was in this situation, I’d put the runner beans outside during the day to try to slow them down a bit, not ideal though.

 

It’s probably just me, but I always found that getting the beans started early didn’t result in early crops. Mostly the flowers just ended up on the ground - no beans.

 

I've only just put some in pots yesturday, but with be doing more in 2 weeks time, then another 2 weeks and so on,
Half my spuds was planted last week in the nice sunshine and i will plant more when it warms up again