I'm growing MOSS in my lawn - lots of it! What can I add to the soil to clear up the problem?

Question

There is a large oak in the front of the house and it pelts the ground with twigs, leaves, and you name it - this tree sheds it - acorns, bark, and the whole doughnut. I'm in the South - Little Rock - and the soil is not the usual Illinois black dirt that I grew up with... this stuff gets as hard as dry clay tho it looks like a light brown loam to me and it certainly grows bushes and trees and WEEDS very well. The moss is green (or yellow-green according to the moisture in the ground) and I'd call it a club moss if I was forced to give it a specific name. I've tried more water... less water... light tilling and replanting with seed... chemical ferterlizers... I'm about out of ideas. Help.. help.. help. Please.

Answer 1

First, you can't quit watering your oak. It needs a lot of water.
The oak's shallow roots soak up water and nutrients and keep out good grass and allows nothing to grow but moss, weeds, poison ivy, etc.

I have a ton of oaks and plant flower beds around them. The drip line is beyond the beds for the most part and the dirt, manure and sand I have added create a rich, moist environment for both the oak and the plants. Try variegated ginger, ivy, monkey or mondo grass for the border, iron plants for deep shade, caladiums, ferns, asian jasmine and whatever else you like.

But, if you do not add a bed, expect hard, mossy soil underneath the oak and more weeds.

Answer 2

I grew up with this sort of problem too. Let me tell you my family secret. You might thing this is a Little crazy but i am not kidding this is guaranteed to work. It softens up the dirt and at the same time enriching the soil with minerals and also gets rid of the problem . You just have to trust me.

Ingredients:

1. 2 1/2 cup lemon juice (dog urine works just fine too)

2.cup of brown sugar

3. 1/3 cup of salt

4. cup of fertilizer

5. 5oz of fine ground up chalk

6. 1/2 cup of sweet pickling juice

7. 6 gallons of water


instructions:

Take a plastic trash can and dump ingredient 1-7 inside. Stir well until ingredients completely dissolved into water. Apply in two separate coats 30 minutes apart over moss. You will begin to see results within days. Good luck.

Answer 3

The easiest and most natural solution would be to leave the moss alone and learn to enjoy it. It's actually very soft and quite pretty. Plus, you don't have to mow it! If you really want to kill the moss, you can sprinkle lime (calcium carbonate) on it. That will do it in in a fairly short amount of time. Then, however, you'll be left with horrible bare spots that will require a lot of effort to deal with (and continue to deal with, ad infinitum). Good luck!

Answer 4

Actually its what you can take out that will solve your problem. Moss grows where there is an abundance of water. So wrap up you slip and slide and save it for next summer.

Make sure when it rains that you don't have pooling of water if you do, you might want to think about drainage pipes.