Moss in Your Lawn? 6 Things to Do to Help You Have a Perfect Moss Free…

The Mossy Lawn Problem

I may be imagining it, but lawn moss seems to be a big problem this year. Unless we do something about this mossy problem, then come the autumn and winter there wont be any grass left in our lawns, just moss, mud, lawn weeds and lawn weed grasses.

Snow! Is that the Cause of the Bad Lawn Moss?

In Southern England, where I live, we had a much harder winter than usual and in early January, unusually we had some snow. Not just a sprinkling of the stuff but we had 8 inches over one night. Some of you around the world would say 8 inches of snow is nothing but we just can not cope with it here. There was enormous disruption to everything, but the kids loved it, as of course the schools were closed for several days. I believe that this snow has caused there to be more moss in the lawn than ever before. It produced the ideal conditions for moss to thrive with damp soil being the main factor. Of course the snow wasnt the only thing to contribute to the moss problem as it didnt stop raining from early November until early March with that bit of snow in the middle.

Why is Moss in the Lawn a Problem?

So lawn moss is thriving but how do we kill the moss and get our lawns back to being grass? You see the problem with moss is that it does not form a very good surface for a lawn and if the lawn is used for games during the summer then all that will be left is bare soil. Bare soil, a bit of summer rain and kids playing on the lawn equals a mud bath and the lawn will be rendered useless and unusable. Lawn weeds and weed grasses will move into the bare patches and we then have a major lawn renovation job on our hands.

Killing Moss in Your Lawn

So how do we get rid of this mossy lawn problem? In fact any lawn with a lot of moss will assistance.

We can rake it out but that wont do it as the moss will nevertheless be there and just return all the stronger We can hope it will die in the summer, but it wont as moss also loves ineffective unfed turf and it will just get stronger We can kill it using a moss killer and that will work but we will be left with bare soil

The answer is two of the above:-

1. Kill the moss in April early May using a lawn moss killer such as lawn sand or another proprietary lawn moss killer

2. Rake out the dead moss when it has turned black

3. Plus regular mowing, but please, dont mow too close and scalp the lawn or you will just add to your mossy lawn problem.

satisfy the Lawn

We also need a good lawn feeding program for the summer and then a bit more work in the autumn to return our lawn to a healthy state ready for next year and beyond. So we need to do the following:-

4. satisfy the lawn in April or early May with a high nitrogen spring/summer lawn food. Do this whether you have killed and raked out the moss or not

5. satisfy the lawn again in late June, this is again with a high nitrogen spring/summer lawn food

6. satisfy the lawn again in early September with a low nitrogen, autumn lawn food

If we follow this basic program of lawn maintenance then our lawn will have recovered enough so that in the Autumn we can do some more work to bring our lawn back to being strong and healthy, ready to survive the winter and give us our perfect lawn for next Spring and beyond.