in today's project diary I will teach you the causes behind leaf girl welcome to project Diaries in today's video I'm gonna combine quite a few videos all in one mainly because people keep asking me about my lemon trees now I have already done a walkthrough video of all the damage the storm caused this year but I didn't include my lemon trees mainly because I thought they were dead they were all the way up to past here and they basically got snapped off and I just left them for dead but they actually started to bounce back but they are having a lot of problems with leaf curl now a leaf curl can be a sign for lots of different problems so I'm going to go through them all hopefully today now this one here as you can see it's it's drooping the the leaf is curling underneath itself and it just doesn't look healthy this is due to under watering now the reason why I've stopped watering these is for another leaf curl problem now let me see if I can find it I'll give you a close-up so as you can see here these leaves are showing some kind of signs that there's something wrong now younger trees will show a lot more stress than a well-established mature tree but as you can see in this example the leaf is trying to curl up underneath itself the reason for this is it's trying to protect itself from the sunlight to stop something called photosynthesis now leaves trying to shade themselves from sunlight is a sure sign for a long period of over watering now all the storms of rain that we've had has completely drenched the garden and these little trees didn't like it at all so the best thing is to bring these indoors and dry them out so obviously I thought these were dead so I neglected them quite a bit so that leaf curl isn't anything to do with what's going on above ground and even though it is the leaves are trying to tilt over and stop that photosynthesis it's mainly to do with the root system now if I can just carefully pull that out you can see that there are some lovely roots there but this plant is is almost a year old and the root system should be a lot more developed by now and this is basically because of over watering so basically it's absorbing too much sunlight and and the the water is actually suffocating or drenching the the roots and it can't soak up enough water so it doesn't want as much light so the way to solve this is basically just to give them a good drought you basically need this soil to dry out now thankfully I've actually been doing this for the past few weeks so the leaves are bouncing back really well so the other trouble is is pest control and it can look like this yeah I'm going to start off with one of the easiest ones here as you can see the leaf is really underdeveloped slightly wrinkled and walked it's also showing signs of yellowing of the leaves now while yellowing of the leaves can show many different signs these small yellow dots are a clear indication of pest infestation now this can be caused by many different pests that can attack your plant such as aphids and mealy bugs the small webbing at a topper a leaf is a clear sign this is spider mite these pests start feeding on your leaves our early stages causing them to stunt in growth and gives the distorted texture a variety of pests feed from the leaf from underneath which causes the slight yellowing in spots if left untreated this infestation could spread all over your plant and eventually stunt its growth this leaf here is fairly similar in its deformities but this is caused by citrus chlorotic dwarf virus also known as CCTV this is caused by white fly infecting your plant with a pathogenic fungus clear science for this a chlorotic flaking of younger leaves this will cause warping curling inverted cupping and a spoon shaped leaf this can affect all citrus trees such as lemon grapefruit mandarin and orange if left untreated this can infect your entire tree and also transplant over to other trees if you're grafting here is another fungus that could be early signs for cherry leaf spot this fungus starts to spread it develop just before lethal and early signs for this are a yellowing of the leaves just before they start to drop much like black spot on roses this fungus can overwinter on dead leaves that have fallen to the ground and its spores can spread over a rainy spring season these lesions first appear as small purple spots that later turn into red and brown at a later stage these spots will then turn black and cover the majority of the leaf these spots will then a male all over the surface of the leaf and eventually cause holes if left untreated at early stages this could cause your tree not to bloom well if your tree does start producing fruit it could then affect those you can treat this in the same way as black spots so check out the link on the screen now and don't forget to subscribe if you'd like to keep up to date and all of my future releases here is another fungus called peach leaf curl this fungus is slightly different than the others because it can overwinter on young buds and in the following spring this fungus will then attack the entire new growth only the early new leaves will be infected and later leaf growth shouldn't show any signs of infection but this early infection is detrimental to the health and growth of your tree as it will cause the leaves to die and drop early stopping the photosynthesis for the plant which means your plant won't absorb enough energy to produce a really good fruit yield in very low cases this can also infect the fruit now this one I found really interesting this is caused by Gore - these are much smaller than spider mites and can't really be detected by the naked eye despite not being able to see them their presence is detected by these small bumps much like a mosquito bite on human skin while the mite is feeding off the plant it secretes a chemical into the plant tissue that causes these little bumps despite this your plants health shouldn't be affected there are no active treatments to stop this so it's something you're just going to have to put up with this leaf is most common but really hard to diagnose the leaf edges curling up could be an intermittent temperature meaning it could be getting too hot in a day or two cold at night this could also be a sign for over watering the slight lift discoloration could also be an over watering sign but again it can be an under watering sign as well but if it's under watering your leaves will more than likely curl under or wilt the discoloration of the leaves can also be a sign for nutrition deficiencies a manganese deficiency will first start showing on younger leafs whereas a magnesium deficiency will first start showing on older leaves it's also advisable to do a pH level on your soil as this could be a sure sign that your growing medium could be too alkaline so as you probably know lemons are not native to England so I'm just not used to this kind of cold climate and especially the fact that we've had so much rain over the summer these have just been drenched now you really don't need to water a citrus or specialty lemon trees as much so what I'm gonna do is help these dry a little bit more by putting them in bigger pots using dry soil and hopefully this will allow the root system to branch out and establish a little bit stronger roots so I'm just going to show you how to do that in a close-up now so I'm just going to use a medium size pot that I've got and make sure it's got lots of drainage holes they are citrus or heavy feeders but at the moment I've only got multi-purpose compost because I've been unable to turn my homemade compost heap due to a back injury so these will need a really good citrus fertilizer once a week now the stem is really strong so I'm going to pull it out by the stem really gently and then tease out the root system by breaking down the soil gently as well this will allow the younger roots to go into the new soil and become a lot healthier I want the tree to roughly sit an inch lower than the pots rim as this will also help with watering later then all you need to do is fill the soil in around the sides also if you'd like to make this really handy soil scoop check out the link on the screen now where I teach you how to make six really easy and free garden tools using old plastic milk bottles once you've done that you want to push the soil down gently in order to make the tree sturdy but not too hard to stop the roots growing into the new soil top the song up around the edges if it needs it but don't go above the original soil line once you start watering again this could cause the stem to rot if you pot it too deep if you haven't seen my how to grow lemon trees from seed video check out the link on the screen now if you find any large chunks in the soil you want to break these down as well now citrus really need lots of warmth and lots of sunlight so if you don't have these you really want to bring these indoors and put them in a sunny windowsill or better yet if you built a shed like mine or have a greenhouse it's better to keep them warm in there until the summer temperatures start to rise so there you go now usually I'd water a new pot in but as I'm trying to get this soil to dry out I'm definitely not going to alter it now as you can see I've left a little lip on the top this is going to help for watering later on but what I'm also going to do is now I'm going to bring these back indoors because the temperatures are dropping in the autumn so I'm going to put these in granddad's spare bedroom now I'm going to use the south-facing sunniest windowsill to put these on and hopefully the heating within the house is going to allow these to grow and establish and pretty much grow back in survival I'm absolutely amazed that there's so much new growth and these have really are bouncing back so I just got to repot the other one but I'm not going to do that in this video but hopefully you've enjoyed today's video on curly leaves don't forget to give it a thumbs up if you've enjoyed it and hopefully I'll see you again soon don't forget to subscribe take care if you'd like to keep up to date on all my future releases click the subscribe button here here are some links to some of my other videos and if you tried this or any other projects I'd love to see your progress so please join my facebook gardening group where thousands of people are sharing photos and ideas daily thanks for watching and I'll see you again next time