hi today we're dealing with a really
common problem that you can get on house
plants plants you're growing your
greenhouse and this is actually a citrus
plant this is my mom's kaffir lime trees
are very keen on kaffir lime she likes
Thai food and what this plant actually
has a two connected problems what we're
going to talk about today a scale
insects and city mold the kaffir lime
the citrus you're looking at is really
really badly infected when you look at
the leaves all the blackness on here
that's a City mold and the mold is
growing on a honey Jew or a sticky
secretion that is produced by scale
insects now you probably can't see these
so I'm going to get a macro lens and
take a picture taken and we'll put that
up now so what you're looking at now on
the screen is a picture of a scale
insect and a scale insect has a very
hard outside shell and it's a bit like a
limpet it sticks to the leaf and what
we've got to do is remove all low scale
insects and then once we've removed the
scale insects which is causing a problem
we can then go on and remove the city
mold and the actual plant certainly with
citrus will actually grow back quite
healthily and will actually end up with
leaves looking like these and of course
these the classic double kaffir lime
leaves which give you that fantastic
aroma and scent and flavor to your food
you can't get from anything else good
spray the entire plant with chemicals
and that does have quite a good effect
but the scale insects because of the
hard outside case of them can be quite
resistant to it so I always found
although it's laborious and fiddly the
easiest things to get yourself some
basic methylated spirits and some little
cotton buds you soak the cotton bud in
the methylated spirits then if we focus
right in here I'll show you what we do
scale insects appear both on the front
and underneath the leaves and the
mold will appear not only on the leaves
actually on the branches of the tree as
well and you can even get scaled and
sits right in here sitting in the crook
of the branches and it's a matter of
just time and patience of rubbing those
scale insects with a methylated spirits
coated cotton bud and it will lifts them
off and you need to lift off all of the
scale insects all the way through this
kaffir lime has one here sitting quite
happily on the actual branch and you
need to lift that off as well and this
is laborious but you know sit down I'm
sitting in the conservatory I've got my
dog wandering around if Hattie appears
occasionally I'm very sorry she's in
very very inquisitive not like the two
elder ones and I'm going to go through
and the first thing I'm gonna do
starting at the bottom is take off all
of those scale insects you take a bowl
of water and put a couple of good
squirts of a liquid soap into it it's
sort of warm water you take these little
cotton pads
and it's a matter again a gently soaking
each leaf and that takes off the
mold and the mold is actually
growing on the honey jus that was
created by the scale insect and this
could take me an hour quite easily but
once it's done if you've got all those
scale insects off and sometimes you'll
see like little white blobs as you're
working through and that's the eggs of
the scale insects do exactly the same to
them of the methylated spirits and we're
going to come up and down each one of
these branches he says dropping and
that's because I've caught myself on
these spines citrus is a bit of a booger
in that it's very very spiky thanks hat
thanks for the help and it's a matter of
sort of slowly working through all of
this plant until all of the scale
insects are gone all of the city mold is
gone and then what I would suggest is
that you give it a really good citrus
feed because it will be feeling quite
weak scale insects weaken plants so give
it a really good feed and citrus are
tough it will bounce back as you can see
from the top leaves if I bend this right
over even with all this problems it is
pushing out leaves it is really trying
to sort of fight off this infestation
so that's scale insects and City molds
you can get it on indoor plants
greenhouse plants you can even get it
outside on things like apple trees in
which case you are going to have to
spray because you couldn't really s
really entire apple tree like this but
for small plants or plants that are in
pots and you can deal with I think the
best way is the methylated spirits and
warm soapy water what we're now ten days
after the initial treatment with the
Mets and the soapy water the kaffir lime
was then fed with citrus feed and as you
can see we already
have lots and lots of new healthy growth
which is fantastic
we've got flowers about to come which
will give us that amazing scent and the
kaffir lime is now going to spend the
summer outside here on the patio X
remember that the thing that citrus
really don't like are those very very
high summer temperatures so we'll keep
an eye out to make sure that we've got
all of those scale insects
I know it's fiddly but it really does
make a dramatic difference and these
leaves now can be allowed to mature and
when the dark green that's when they
have the best taste and the best flavor
and kaffir lime is one of those things
that gives you that fantastic
unbelievable taste to Thai curries but
also you can actually make things like
kaffir lime and coconut ice cream it
really is fantastically versatile one of
the things we use it in our kitchen for
is we actually do a lemon linguini which
has kaffir lime and lemon zest and our
shell lemon drop chilies so a great
plant to have really really useful
thanks a lot for watching