While Irish businesses, including farmers and fishers, continue to deal with the immediate challenges posed by covid-19, taking a longer term perspective will become increasingly important. Planning for and investing in sustainable development is the best way to promote growth and prosperity in your business. The Futuregrowth loan scheme is here to help by providing access to loans of up to three million Euro four terms of between seven and 10 years with competitive interest rates. Find out more at Skydeck Golf Digest.

Or call one 800 ATO for 482 loans range from 25000 euro up to three million euro four times of between seven to 10 years. Loans are unsecured, up to half a million euro eligibility criteria and terms and conditions apply. This is a Government of Ireland initiative delivered by the SBI.

That pot candy show with Marter, private trust, Ireland's leading private hospitals with locations nationwide, including Dublin, Cork and Limerick. This is News Talk. Well, now it's time to talk to Cauchon, a horticulturalist, keen gardener and of course, a member of the Organic Garden Center Family Support. Good morning.

Good morning, Passioned. I was in the pub myself last night. Oh, very good. Mostly socially distance. Do you enjoy your film?

I did indeed. I did indeed. Now let's talk about some of the topics you've suggested.

And one of the ideas is to go green in your garden and something I've never heard of using organic green manures rather than weedkillers. What exactly are they?

Well, organic growers would be very familiar with them. Passioned agreement or is there a collection of plants that you saw from seed at this time of year? So say, for example, you're digging out your potatoes at the moment and you don't tend to plant that soil for the winter and you want to keep it relatively weed free. You saw a collection of plants called green manure. They're available a seed from your local garden center. You simply sprinkle them on the soil, rake the main.

They grow within a couple of our germinate within a couple of weeks and they cover the soil with foliage, suppressing the weeds. Not only that, but when you dig them back into the soil in February and March, they actually release a lot of nutrition, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium and lots of minor nutrients as well. So it's a great way to cover a piece of soil with literally a cover crop that suppresses the weeds. But also you're adding much needed nutrition back into the soil.

So their plants, like Cecelia, is a beautiful plant. It's a green manure. It will germinate over the winter. It'll actually flower within about eight or nine weeks. So it flowers, but also adds lots of nutrition to the soil, but also helps to keep the weeds down. So look for those that are collecting plants called green manure seed. You saw them nail polish and they're wonderful, particularly in the in the vegetable garden for suppressing wheat.

I presume, though, the weeds will return in the spring. Well, you see, you're digging over the soil. The cover crop of green manure suppresses the weeds for the winter. And then you're digging over your soil, adding that cream in your back into the soil, planting your potatoes or vegetables in the springtime. And yes, you need to do your traditional hoing or a little bit of weeding in springtime, but it helps to kind of tidy up the ground.

You're doing something for nature, for the insects, and you're adding much needed organic fertilizer back into the soil.

Now, question for Puric. We just put down a new lawn the other day. What do we need to make sure it grows before winter? Do we need to fertilize it? And what do you recommend?

OK, and September is a really good time for sowing lawns in general. I do recommend putting the fertilizer in before you put the seed on. You can do it on the. Exactly. On the same day, the fact that the listener has already sold the seed, it's going to take about three weeks for that seed to germinate. So put the fertilizer on now get yourself some preceding lawn fertilizer or some Osmo April one. You simply sprinkled over the soil area.

The rain will wash it in and that fertilizer will be available then for the grass when it terminates in three weeks time. The other key thing with new lawns is to make sure that you Mowhoush once it's movable, so once the grass is about an inch high, get out, the more on a dry day and take the top off the grass because that'll help for it to Taylor and Branch and become nice and take before we get into the depths of winter.

There's always the fear. You use the lawnmower that you're going to pull all the roots of the grass out. No, you won't.

Obviously the blade needs to be sharp. You need to do it obviously in a rotary dry day when the soil isn't too wet, but the grass won't start to fill out until it actually the top is removed. And that's very important. People tend to leave it too long. The other thing you'll find is if you mow the grass, you're suppressing a lot of the weeds that are going to germinate as well. So you're eliminating things like ground the Red Chank that tend to germinate with the lawn seed as well.

So as soon as the grass is more able, get the more and give it a topping.

Ask Borek, please, about this. I replanted hydrangeas two weeks ago, but now they're dying. I gave them lots of fertilizer, lots of water. Is there any remedy?

Can I save them a little bit of patience? Hydrangeas are resilient plants and they will come back from moving now. The time to transplant parts starts in November. We really shouldn't be moving plants. If they're in pots and containers, fine. You can plant them out into the garden soil now, but if they're in the ground, don't move them to go dormant, which is normally about the middle of November. Now, having said all that, the fact that you've moved them, I would prune them back, take some weight out of the top of the hydrangeas and leave them alone.

They are deciduous. They're going to drop the leaves in November anyway, and that plant would come back into full growth again. So it is a tough, resilient plant. Of course, it's going to look a bit sad and miserable after being moved and transplanted, but it will recover from that as we go into spring. Stop the feeding. There's no need to feed it and watering. There's enough moisture in the soil at the moment. There's no need to water any further.

Just leave it alone. It is spring back into growth next March.

I'm having problems with crows. Eating my apples at the scarecrow is not. Working any suggestions other than netting? Well, unfortunately not. I mean, there's nothing that you can netting is normally the traditional way of protecting the athletes. Now you can harvest apples early generally. The trick is to cut the apple and give it a twist. And once it comes away in your hand, it's ready for harvesting. But you can also take apples. Craws generally attracted apples as they begin to ripen, particularly red apples.

And so if you can take them off the tree a little bit early, that's still ripen in your garbage and or in a dark, cold area. You can store them and they'll ripen over the next couple of weeks. So if the crows are at them and you're not prepared to net them, I would harvest them now and store them in boxes in a dark cold storage area and they'll ripen over the next couple of weeks. Is it possible to move carpet roses?

And if so, when is the best time?

Yes, you can. These are the ground covering roses. Again, they're flowering at the moment and they're beautiful. So leave alone until November, maybe into December. So with the leaves to drop off the roses, prune them back, take at least six inches, maybe a foot off the plants, list them and transplant them. And when you're transplanting plants, it's important that you put them down at the original debt level on the ruched. So don't bury them too deeply.

Put them down at the original level and they'll be perfectly fine to come back into growth in the springtime.

What is the best method of getting rid of Horsetail? Come on. Wants to know.

Yeah, a very common question. Mare's tail on horses tail is dying back at the moment. Actually, it's gone. It's a herbaceous plant, so it disappears for the winter but will reemerge next spring again. If it's growing up through gravel pathways and kind of non crop areas, you could use one of the lawn weedkillers like diko fire that tends to kill it back. But to be honest, the best way to control it is to plant shrubs and particularly its internal borders, to plant larger plants that will actually compete with it and suppress it, because many of the traditional weedkillers are ineffective with mare's tail and it's just a nuisance weeds.

So planting plants like hydrangeas and hyp hurricanes and body as larger plants helped to suppress the weeds, particularly if it's in shrub borjesson beds.

Can you please ask Portakabins the best time to plant breccia bulbs? I have a large garden and I need a lot of cover for summer beds and which variety have very large leaves.

That's from oak and such an easy plant to grow. This is Crosby or Breccia. It comes in many, many different varieties. It's actually a South African plant, so that tells you the location it needs. It needs a bright, sunny location to really do well. And the best variety for me is one called Lucifer. It's a red, brilliant red variety forms, beautiful large clumps and flowers. Right through the summer. There's another great variety called Honey Angels, which is a yellow variety or McKensie.

Emily McKenzie is another variety of bresh. So really good for she's easy to grow if you do have it in your garden. This is a time of year where you can split and divide it and move it to new sections of the garden. But Lucifer for me is probably the best. And it's a beautiful red variety.

Listener from Malahide wants to know boxes hedging, brown area coming on it, no green foliage on these areas. Is it a blight? And can I just.

Yeah, it's correctly diagnosed as blight. It's box blight, which is very common, particularly this year with the wet August weather. And you get a treatment called top boxes. It's a small blue tablet. You mix it in water, you apply to the foliage of the boxwood and that helps to arrest the box and it also feeds it as well. So apply that now. And one blue tablet to a litre of water applied onto the foliage, the boxwood, and that'll help to prevent any further damage.

We planted our strawberries in hanging baskets on a wooden shed this year to stop the snails having a feast instead.

We've been having awful trouble with woodlice eating them anyway. And it's from grace in Cork.

Well, I mean, that's unfortunately the woodlice are attractive, particularly as the strawberries are beginning to ripen now. And look, this, you know, you just need to get out there. You need to be first in the queue and pick the strawberries as they're beginning to ripen. And the great thing about strawberries part is they'll grow and tinderboxes hanging baskets open to any sort of containers. They're so easy to grow, but you do have to prevent them against the slugs and the the woodlice, particularly at this stage where they're beginning to ripen.

So pick them early. Can I move?

Bamboo's that have been in situ for two years. Can I do that in November?

Ishioka, Bambu, Transplant's really, really easy. You can actually split it up. So from one plant you can make five or six. Just be careful where you plant it because many of the bamboos can spread quite a lot. So depends on the variety that the listener has. If it's an invasive, quite a vigorous variety, make sure we planted well away from pathway's and somewhere that you can give it the freedom of the garden to spread. But November is a great time to move bamboo and many plants can be moved in November.

I have a rhododendron in a large part, had tried to bloom, but it didn't in the end, when can I planted in the ground same advice, the same.

Well, the fact that it's in a pot part at the moment and any plants that are in containers because they're contained and restricted, you can actually transplant them now at this time of year. So there's no problem moving that rhododendron. The November transplanting is done for plants that are actually planted in the soil and you're physically digging them up. So transplanted. Now, remember, the rhododendrons are acacia's plants that need acid soil. So get yourself a couple of bags of compost and some medications feed, mix it into your garden soil and plant your rhododendron if you can get your hands on some form of manure that's acidic in nature.

And it's brilliant for rhododendrons and even to use it every couple of years as a mulch on the base of the rhododendrons helps to keep the soil acidic as also seeds the plant as well, but certainly move it now. A couple of quick ones to finish, my son, who's age wants to get his own BlackBerry Bush for Christmas, can you source them from a garden center? And can it be planted at that time of year, Christmas?

Yeah, you can you can plant Blackberries at this time of year and look for the tallest variety. So there's a range of of blackberries that have no thorns and varieties like Loch Ness is a really nice one. Or Helen for me is a really beautiful variety as well. It produces really big Blackberries on Toormina stems that need a little bit of support. So you kind of train them on a few wires or grow them against a wall. But this is the time of year for pruning, for planting blackberries, but all fruit in general part.

And if the listener wants to try something a little bit different, there's a lovely berry called the Honey Berry, which is related to the honeysuckle, but produces really long Blackberries as well. A beautiful plant on Izarra. So that's one called Honey Berry. Look for that as well and be something different for the eight year old. OK, we have to leave it there.

Paul Courson, thank you very much for joining us. If covid-19 has impacted your business's finances and you have difficulties accessing credit, the government's covid-19 credit guarantee scheme could help. The scheme is designed to provide SMEs, primary producers and small midcaps access to low cost liquidity to keep their businesses operating.

The scheme covers loans of up to one million euro, with times of up to five and a half years.

The covid-19 credit guarantee scheme facilitates your bank and providing liquidity and working capital to your business with an initial focus on term loans and working capital loans. Loans of up to 250000 euro are unsecured. The scheme will be available until the end of December 2020.

Find out more at S.P.C.A. Gulfton i.e. PROCOL 800 AIGO for 482. The scheme covers loans between 10000 and one million euro terms of between three months to five and a half years longer. Unsecured, up to 250000 euro terms and conditions apply. This is a Government of Ireland initiative delivered by the SBI.