marco

Anti-desiccants are liquid 'anti -drying ' agents.

A little background about me 1st:
I have about 25 years experience in the Ohio 'green industry' including (primarily) professional turf grass maintenance, nursery management, arboretum management, landscaping & other 'outside' areas...

Anti-desiccants are used quite a bit by landscapers when they're moving trees during warmer periods, for example, as to not allow too much valuable transpiration of water vapor out of the tissue in transport, especially when they're transported on trucks under tarps. Or, in other situations, it may be used as a 'winter coating' for some plantings that were planted too late that year, or otherwise planted in notoriously difficult climate conditions that may make them susceptible to winter 'wind burn'.

In the trial and error experiments I did, I used a Horticulture Oil that has a 92% unsulfonated residue. (92% 'free' of sulfur)
And then I eventually, after some mistakes, learned that the ratio of 15:1 works best (15 p. distilled water to 1 p. hort oil).

All I do is gradually condition the trees back inside around the middle to the end of September, taking them out of the ground still in the 10 gallon pots that I had planted them in the spring (with extra holes, of course).
Two weeks after I get them in, around the middle of October or so, I just mist the tops of the leaves, not even to the point of runoff.
Then, I'm careful not to put them in to direct sunlight in a picture window- I give them decent light only behind venetian blinds in 70 F temps.

Once during the winter I rinse the leaves in the laundry room to shake the 'dust' off the oil. Then I'll reapply the oil after the leaves have dried.

Come the first of May I will reverse the process to condition them 'outside' gradually, also making sure all the oil is off before they're in full sun.

If not, they're toast!