So, as far as I can tell, this product is just vegetable based soap/surfactant, and sugar from various sources. There's another "miracle" product with even more outlandish claims that seems to be almost identical to this - called Bio Wash. Unfortunately, this product has the endorsement of a well known gardening personality in Dallas who many people trust.
Obviously the surfactant will kill insects - just like castille soap or insecticidal soap. The more contentious issue is: can sugar applied to leaves actually enter the tissue in any significant way? Could this result in frost protection through the antifreeze properties of sugars, or even directly contribute to the carbohydrate stores of the plant?
I'm skeptical because I haven't been able to find any evidence that this penetration occurs. And if you really could "feed" plants a significant amount of carbohydrates through their leaves... wouldn't everyone be doing this? Imagine how much cheaper it would be to grow beets for sugar and then feed it to more finicky, high-profit fruiting plants? I do recall that experiments with injecting sugars into the phloem of plants were failures (I don't remember why).
Anyway, I suspect that if you want to make decent homemade version of this product, you can just mix together castille soap and molasses.
|