Urgent Ideas to Sort my Moss Lawn Please

fleetingmind

The good lady has insisted I mow the lawn today which I have just finished. There are large areas of moss on the lawn so I decided to start raking the moss out and It turns out that it is a 90% moss lawn.

The bit I have raked is now just earth! Looking forward to the wife coming back and seeing it!

While I have started I am keen to carry through with it and get a nice grass lawn for the kids to play on.
So...

Do i continue to remove evry last bit of moss?
What then - fork the soil all over? Soil is quite tough so how deep does the fork need to go in?
Sprinkle lawn sand over it?
What then though? Wil grass come through or will I need to put down grass seed? Can this be done today with the sand? Or am I better of putting down turf?

I have a south facing garden and most of it gets sun apart form a litle bit which doesn't.

Any helps or suggestions is greatly appreciated.

Mortal

it depends on ££ and how much patience you have. If ££ isn't a problem, go for turf, it'll be heaps quicker.

Lawn sand is for drainage. You have to add your grass seed. I prefer a mix of good quality compost and sand, mix it really well and apply, BUT you may well have to net it this time of year, or all your hard work will end up in the tummy of the neighbourhood birdies.

If it were me, and I had kids waiting to play on it, I'd turf it. Most experts say keep kids and pets off it for it's first season, so you should be ok by the big holidays.

Dustykitten

Mortal wrote: »

Lawn sand is for drainage. You have to add your grass seed.

:eek: no it's not. Lawn sand is to kill moss. You put it on the moss, it will turn black you rake it out. Sand for draining a lawn in different. I don't have a drainage problem so I'm not sure which sand you'd use but I'd imagine it would be sharp sand.

Dustykitten

To solve your problem you need to first look at why you have so much moss and then work out what if anything you can do about it.

Is the area shaded (by trees/neighbouring houses?) can you do anything about this? Trees could be prunned but if the problem is a neighbours house like my problem you can't solve that.

Do you have a drainage problem? Do you have water logged areas - if yes you need to spike and add sand.

Is the grass you have too thin and weak? If so feed it, cut regularly.

The stronger the grass the less the moss will have a chance to come back.

I've got a lawn co in for a quick fix - they fed it, and killed the moss 2 weeks ago - it is much better now (they don't use lawn sand they say it is not that great).

They are coming back to scarify and over seed to thicken up the grass I have (which is quite a fine grass and too thin)

melkuvel

I have problems with moss all the time partly because of poor drainage and shade
I have never solved the problem completely but manage to keep on top of it by using weed ,feed and moss killer every year, then i rake out the dead moss and mix some grass seeds with a bit of soil and just scatter it over where the bald patches are,
If you didn't want to use the moss killer you could just rake it our manually instead
When choosing the grass seed my advice is do not go for the quick growing seed, it might seem fab at the time (grass in a week) but for the rest of its life that patch of grass will always grow quicker and you will end up with tufts everywhere

Your wife will thank you in a few months time when your lawn is looking fab