By DoMyOwn staff
Paul explains the factors that contribute to moss growth and how he got a handle on the moss problem in his lawn.
Pretty sure this is going to be a regular thing!
I'm also pretty sure I've mentioned this in ever episode so far.
And you either love it, and have it growing in ornament hanging on your lamp in your office...
You know who you are!
...or you absolutely hate it and can't stand the sight of it! And I tend to be the latter part of that statement.
I'm talking of course about all the moss in the back yard. But why is the moss even growing back here? Let's dive into that!
Factor number one why moss tends to grow, too much shade. Even now you get an indication of how much shade happens back here.Because of our lovely jungle.
Pretty sunrise though!
The jungle is definitely casting a lot of shade over on this portion of the yard. But these Bradford Pears were the main source of the problem. Again, if you look at my neighbors yard, its just bare dirt and moss as well because these Bradford Pears were just overgrown and out of control.
So trimming those back is going to help get more air flow and sunlight into this portion of the yard, which also brings up a good point, you want to trim back your trees and your bushes that cause excess shade on the lawn.
Areas that tend to get less than six hours of sunlight, either direct or indirect, or more likely to have a moss problem, like what we have over here on this side of the yard and in the back.
Another factor contributing to the moss problem, look at the way my yard is. I'm slopping down here and I'm slopping down away from the jungle. SO whenever it rains, all that water tends to gather in the middle, which is causing me to have way to much water back here. And it's the same issue over here on this side of the yard. My drive way and yard slope down from here and gradually slopes from the neighbors yard and their property into this flat surface right here. So all that water gathers and just puddles right here. So it's just way to much and that's why we have a lot of moss growing over here.
Another reason why you probably got moss growing, the soil is really compacted. So we have to rake all of this stuff out of here, then try to kill off whatever we have left, and then we'll go and aerate and loosen up the soil so that we can try and eliminate this problem. Some of the ways I can try and control some of the moss back here is I could bring in some more top soil or dirt and try and change the grade or the elevation, or add in some french drains to just try and really drain a lot of the water that collects back here. Also performing the soil test that we did earlier will tell us if the soil back here is overly acidic which helps contribute to moss growth. So that will also tell us what kind of fertilizers or amendments we need to put into the back portion of this yard to try and get the grass to thrive instead of the moss.
Another little fun fact about moss is it tends to grow in cool, wet seasons, which is also the perfect time to try and kill and get rid of it. I could try to keep spraying some stuff on it to try and kill it, but there's really one good way to really get it out of my yard. Good old fashioned elbow grease!
Well it didn't take long for that to get old, so...time to but out something with a little bit more muscle!
Now we're talking!
I would be a huge, huge liar if I said that was easy. That was hard!
It just dawned on me that I didn't really go over the tools that I used to get the moss out. I started out with this rake right here. This one is mainly used for loosening and leveling soil. But I wanted to use it because it's nice and stiff and really hard and made of steel, and a fiberglass handle. This one, that's your general purpose rake, it's cheap, it's plastic, it's got a wood handle on it. I used this to just kind of gather up everything once it's already loosened.
As I already stated in the video, the rake got old really really quick, and I was just getting really worn out. So I went and rented what they call a power rake. And it's exactly that, it's a rake that's powered.
It did a really good job of just scraping and cutting the moss out of the yard. And all I had to do is go back with my cheap plastic rake, and just gather all of the moss up into a pile, bad it up and throw it away. So here is where we're at!
A large majority of it has been taken out. There's still a few patches that were kind of stubborn and don't want to come up but I've got something for that. But, overall, I'm pleased. A lot of hard work, but it was worth it. You can see right here, there's still some that just didn't want come up. Here's the left side of the yard where the Bradford Pears are. A lot of it is gone. A lot of it! But there's still tiny little patches that remain.
My little friend right here and his companion are going to help take care of the rest. What I've got here is a product made specifically to kill moss. Now before you spray something like this, you want to try and rake out as much of it as you can. Anything that's left over gets this treatment.
This stuff will stain concrete, so use caution! If you do have to spray up along side your sidewalks or your driveway, grab some cardboard or something like that to protect it, and then simply spray! That way when you spray you're not getting anything onto your driveway or sidewalk, it's hitting your cardboard.
That seriously took all day to tackle that problem! But that's OK, that's what Do My Own Lawn Care is all about.
This isn't the end of the moss saga. I'm going to have to go back there and rake out what's left, after the moss killer has had a chance to do what it does best...kill moss!
Unless I change the grade back there, so that water doesn't collect or create better irrigation so that it can drain out of those areas, it probably will return. I'll try as hard as I can to keep it under control and keep it out of there so that grass can take over and start to grow in those areas.
After a very very long day of raking and spraying, that's it for this one. I hope you found that helpful and I hope I answered a lot of questions on how to get rid of moss in the yard. If you've got anymore, leave in the comments section below, shoot our customer service staff an email, or pick up the phone and give them a call.
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