Good news: if you’re the type who keeps a list of things to worry about, like a meteor hitting your backyard or running out of Oreos, you might not have to add moss.
Here in Idaho, we don’t typically have the humid, damp climate that moss needs to thrive.
But moss also loves a thin, struggling lawn. And we all know it’s easy to let your lawn care slide, offering moss a chance to creep in.
How to prevent moss in your yard? Check out a few tips. (Sorry, you’re on your own for meteor prevention.)
First, What Exactly is Moss?
Moss is a shallow-rooted plant that spreads by spores and root-like structures called rhizoids. It tends to grow during the gray, wet days of late fall and early spring.
Moss loves to fill in bare spots where your lawn is thin. If your lawn is struggling and you see moss happily filling in the gaps, it means your lawn needs some help to grow thicker and healthier.
Moss is a spongy green sign of a deeper lawn problem, like poor drainage, compacted soil, a soil pH problem, or too much shade.
While moss isn’t a huge problem in Boise or Idaho Falls lawns, when we do see it, it’s because the lawn isn’t thick and healthy, or because the homeowner is watering the lawn too much in shady areas.
How to Prevent Moss in Your Lawn
The good news is that the strategies that prevent moss also benefit your lawn overall — good lawn care you should be doing anyway.
Improve Your Drainage
Make sure your soil is draining properly and isn’t compacted. Aeration can help.
Lawn aeration uses a machine to pull out plugs of soil, creating spaces so that air and water can penetrate, which leads to healthier roots and helps drainage.
Aeration is typically followed by overseeding, as the holes created by aeration are perfect new homes for the grass seed.
A proper seeding with quality grass seed can often do the trick to fill in the occasional lawn bare spot, so moss has no room to sneak in.
Reduce Shade to Prevent Moss in Your Lawn
If areas of your lawn are receiving less than three hours of sunlight per day, trim tree branches to allow more sunlight to reach the lawn. Moss doesn’t like sun. Or be sure you’re planting grass seed designed for shady lawns.
How to Prevent Moss in Your Lawn? Don’t Overwater
Moss loves water, so don’t invite it by overwatering your lawn. Your grass doesn’t need watering every day.
Water too often, and it encourages shallow, needy roots.
Water less often but deeply, and roots will grow deeper and healthier — and you won’t have the wet, soggy conditions moss loves.
Keep Up on the Fertilizer
Your lawn needs food to grow thick and healthy. It might be hungrier than you think.
When to fertilize your lawn in Idaho?
- Mid-to late-April, once the soil temperature reaches 55 degrees.
- Three times during the summer growing season: mid-May, around the end of June, and in early to mid-August.
- Fall. (Don’t skip it. The final fertilizer treatment in fall includes important slow-release granular fertilizer that feeds your hungry lawn for the winter and helps it pop back up, ready to impress, in the spring.)
Get Your Soil pH Tested
Get rid of moss in your lawn with proper pH. We’ve seen moss under pine trees that shed a lot of needles, which adds acidity to the soil. If those areas are also shady and the grass is thin, moss loves that.
A simple soil pH test will tell you if your lawn’s soil needs a boost. Once your lawn is balanced with the right pH, your soil can actually use the nutrients in your fertilizer, and flourish, creating thicker grass to crowd out moss.
Get Rid of Moss in Your Lawn with Iron
There are products designed to kill moss in your lawn, and they typically contain iron. Moss isn’t too crazy about iron.
In fact, one of the reasons we don’t see much moss in our customers’ lawns is because the lawn care products we use contain iron, which may be preventing moss in Idaho lawns.
Is Your Lawn Ready for a New Best Friend?
Everybody wants a thicker, healthier lawn, right? Well, everybody except moss.
Focus on your lawn’s total health for a thick, healthy lawn that leaves no room for moss.
Choose an Idaho Falls or Boise professional lawn care service that bundles your yard’s most-needed treatments into one convenient, no-fuss, six-visit plan that includes everything your lawn needs to grow healthy and green, including weed control and grub control that’s perfectly timed throughout the year.
Fertilizing, weed control, grub control. Done.
Got a few minutes? That’s all you need to get started.
Fill out the form on this page.
Call us at (208) 656-9131.
Or read more about our services.
Then kick back and relax in your healthy, thriving yard.
Image Source: Soil
