Tired of seeing

Moss in Your Lawn?

It seems like it doesn’t take long for moss to invade and take over your lawn, especially with the climate here in Salem. You see it everywhere around town: roofs, sidewalks, in lawns, even on cars. But the moss that grows on your roof is different than the kind of moss in your lawn. However, both types of mosses thrive in certain conditions: wet, shady, and low fertility. The best way to prevent moss from taking over is to reduce or eliminate these conditions as much as possible.

But what if you already have a section of your lawn that is already completely covered in moss? Not to worry, listed below are steps to take.

Step 1: Routine Maintenance

First, focus just on changing the routine maintenance that you do. Along with summertime watering, these corrective actions are the best use of time and money.

So this means keeping the grass longer and fertilizing the grass a few times per year. Note: do not use “weed and feed” types of fertilizers; fertilizers and herbicides should be applied at different times of year and may need to be applied in varying amounts. When selecting a fertilizer, look for the N-P-K ratio on the bag. Grass thrives with a high amount of nitrogen (N), low amount of potasium (P), and medium amount of phosphorus (K). Any lawn fertilizer, like this one, with a that is labeled with 30-0-5 (or close to it) should work well.

If you are feeling spunky, you could test the pH of the soil and adjust it as needed with a variety of materials. (page on this coming soon) Aim for 6.0-6.5 pH for optimal grass health.

Step 2: Water Management

If more drastic action is needed, work to dry the area out in the spring and fall and keep it moist in the summer. Reducing the moisture of your lawn can be done in a variety of ways, depending on your specific situation. Some options are:

Aerating or core drilling
Top-dressing the area with sand
Re-grading the area to remove excess water
Installing a drain tile or french drain in the lawn, or a channel drain nearby to prevent water from entering the area.

You can use these options in combination or separately. Surprisingly, you should water your lawn to get rid of moss. Aim for 1-1.5 inches of water per week, spread evenly throughout the week. Here is a link for figuring out how many inches your sprinklers are delivering.

Step 3: Sunlight Management

Grasses love sunshine. Anything that blocks it is preventing the grass from being healthy and vigorous. This usually means tress for most people. Pruning the tree branches to allow for more light, or removing the tree entirely, may be an option. (Probably not an option for my wife; she picks trees over grass.) When planning a new lawn or over seeding, use a fine fescue variety of grass like creeping red fescue or chewings fescue.

Step 4: Rake it out

If the moss is going strong, you can use a rake or hand dethatching tool (or this big one) to remove the moss. Using a rake or dethatcher will tear out some grass too so do this in early spring so the grass has the best shot at recovery. When using this tool, you will be eliminating the area where moss thrives, thatch, made of dead grass stems and roots. This will leave some bald spots that will need to be reseeded.

Step 5: Chemicals

From my research, I would consider applying a sulfur-based fertilizer for for moss removal . You can apply either ammonium sulfate or iron sulfate to simultaneously discourage moss growth and promote grass growth. I feel I should also remind anyone using chemicals to follow the instructions on the packaging.

Step 6: If you can’t beat them…

Sometimes the specifics of your yard are difficult: a building blocks the sun for several hours per day or maybe there is no economical way to get winter moisture out. If this if the case, you may want to redesign your yard to not have grass. There area variety of plants that do well in damp shade. Or maybe mossy lawns will become a thing. Then I will have to write about how to get the grass out of your moss!