I'm pretty new to lawn and garden stuff and new to this newsgroup. I live in NW Washington and play hell with moss. It chokes out my lawn mower and leaves large clumps all over my lawn when I am done. Is there a quick and easy way to get rid of it with out damaging my grass?? My grass has come a long way, but I would like to get rid of the moss.
The fastest way to get rid of moss is ferrosulphate. After applying it you'll need to remove the dead moss though, or get some fertilizer with bacteria that eat the dead moss.
In the middle of my second summer in the Pacific NorthWest and still learning about my lawn. WIth regards to moss, I think that all you can do is get it under control and then live with it. Go to Costco and get some RidMoss (or something like that in a yellow and white bag). Spread that around now. It will kill the moss and make your lawn look like hell for a while (all that green from the moss becomes black) but this is the first step.
If it's really thick, get out the garden rake or dethatcher and rake up the dead moss. You'll need to wait until the fall to overseed, so if you want to wait until then to do that, fine. Once you've got the moss out, I'd dethatch and then overseed (some say get a split seeder to do that).
Finally, get into a regime of applying lime to the soil every spring or fall. I had bad moss a year ago, but I've got it under control and I'm reasonably happy with the lawn, with the exception of the crabgrass!
Good day Clayton. I'm always getting calls about moss and removal. From your desrciption, I would assume that your soil has high clay content and you very likely have poor drainage. To reduce your moss, you will need to correct the base problems.
Drainage. If your lawn is a bit wet and soft in these moss covered areas then you have drainage issues. The corrective stance would be to hard pipe your roof drains, french drain or curtain drain some of the worse areas and hard pipe that away from the property and if you don't have the grade to do that then you would need to construct a dry well for capture. Most of this is rather cheap to do... if you do the labor 80)
Clay soil. Clay soil is mostly this issue with lawns and moss. You will read that you need to lime your lawn to raise your ph. The ammount of lime you will need to use to correct low ph in your soil maybe so much that you'll have to do it over a few seasons. I would suggest that you consider lime if your soil is under 6.3 ph. Grass will do better with a lower ph than a higher ph. When your ph gets over 7, you'll find the weeds become much more of a problem. Imho the best stuff to bust up clay soil is plain old grass roots.
Suggestions. Figure out if you have drainage issues on your property. Do what you can to correct them.
Wait untill fall.
Lay moss killer. Wait untill moss has turned completely black.
Thatch the lawn area with a power thatcher. Bluebird is one of the best machines to use imho. Rental should be under 80 dollars for the day.
Over seed the lawn area, fertilize and water.
Aerate the lawn in the spring and if the lawn area is really hard clay, aerate again in the fall. From here on out, aeration is the only thing that you will need to do on a regular basis. One or two times a year for the next few years and your moss will not be much of an issue.
Btw, where are you located here in the Pnw? I'm in Bellingham. Have a good day.
Hmm, yes, but since I live in the Netherlands and you probably don't there's not much point in me giving you some brand names... Try your local gardening supplier and tell them exactly what you want and why. Be careful that they don't stuff you with some cheap compost or sth. like that (or sth. with toxins). And be sure to water a lot after applying it if it doesn't rain, it only works with a lot of water (but not too much ;).
My experience is that they either are not powerful enough and leave half the thatch there, or that they are (powerful enough) and remove up to 50% of your grass. So it more or less depends on how deep the moss is and on what type of machine you're hiring/buying..
And even then, moss will grow back, unless you keep the ground calcianated? enough. For a lawn it should be anywhere between 6-7 Ph. The higher the better against moss.
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