Clever new (to me) product to use with any spray

A friend just put me on to this clever product called "Turbo." It's a concentrated additive that acts as a spreading/sticking/penetrating agent when added to any plant spray (insecticide, fungicide, herbicide, etc). No more worrying when you get a heavy rain the day after you spray your trees! I got an 8 oz. bottle at my LGS for $6, but it really goes a long way..... first, you dilute the concentrate 10 to 1 with water, then you add just 2 Tablespoons of diluted Turbo per gallon of product you're spraying.

I don't know if this is a new product, or if it's just new to me, but it seemed like a great idea. I know opinions differ widely on whether to spray at all and what to use if you do, but with this stuff at least you may be able to spray less often.

It's a surfactant probably made from Polyacrylamide. It could be hazardous on edibles whereas a tad of dish soap is not, and does the same thing.

Read my thread here... http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/515266/

Nope.

Ingredients are 20-15% trichloroethane and 75-80% Phythalic glycerol alkyl resin.

A tad of dish soap will certainly act as a good surfactant to improve spreading, but this product also helps the spray stick to the leaves longer, even if it rains.

BTW, polyacrylate is the polymer in baby diapers, and polyacrilamide is the one in those water-absorbing crystals (aka "Soil Moist" or "WaterSorb"). According to the WaterSorb site, "polyacrylamide is a non-toxic earth friendly product which works for 7-9 years in the soil then breaks down to CO2, water and nitrogen."

I'm a huge fan of the water absorbing polymer crystals. I've used the medium size ones (like Soil Moist) in containers for several years, and plants do just fine on my very sunny deck with watering every day or two). This year, I ordered from the WaterSorb folks, http://www.watersorb.com/index.html, so now I have 3 sizes of crystals. I used the small ones in my seedling flats with great results, and I've been using the powdered product when planting bare-root perennials or shrubs, or when sending bare root plants by mail.

I'm sure there are lots of different opinions with regard to effectiveness & safetly of nearly any product. I thought the Turbo Spreader Sticker stuff looked potentially very useful, so I wanted to let other folks know of its existance too.

trichloroethane n.

Either of two colorless, nonflammable, isomeric compounds, C2H3Cl3, having a sweet odor, used as solvents for adhesives, pesticides, and lubricants, and in industrial cleaning solutions.

Phthalic glycerol alkyl resin:

Products that contain this ingredient:
Brand: Bonide Turbo Spreader/Sticker
Bonide Turbo Spreader/Sticker
Category: Pesticides
Form: liquid
Percent: 75-80

Bonide Turbo Spreader/Sticker MSDS Sheet:
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:4IrmBrjGVBkJ:www.bonideproducts.com/msds/pdf/trbsprdr.pdf+Phthalic+glycerol+alkyl+resin&hl=en&start=14&lr=lang_en&client=firefox-a