Moss can affect any lawn in any season, particularly if the conditions are damp and shady. While moss can be a problem any time of year, it becomes more prevalent in the winter months, when the weather conditions are prime for moss to flourish.
Although moss isn’t as unsightly as some common weeds, if left untreated, moss can dramatically impact the health of your lawn. Moss competes with your grass for growing space and can spread, leaving your grass with less and less space until it is completely suffocated. The moss physically smothers the grass roots, making it difficult for the grass to take in any sunlight or essential nutrients.
While moss isn’t always 100% preventable, there are steps you can take to strengthen your lawn and make it a less appealing environment for moss, reducing the chances of moss growing on your lawn.
Moss Prevention
To be able to prevent lawn moss, you must first identify what conditions can cause lawn moss or make it more likely to thrive and grow in your lawn.
Excessive moisture/poor drainage
Moss thrives in damp environments, and actually requires water to reproduce. If your lawn has poor drainage or is damp for any other reason, this will leave your lawn vulnerable to moss growth.
While you can’t stop the rain from falling, there are treatments you can utilise to help your lawn with damp, such as aeration to improve drainage. Clearing debris such as fallen leaves can help with damp by allowing your lawn to breathe and preventing the build-up of moisture beneath such waste.
Shade
While some species of moss do enjoy sunlight, a majority of moss species prefer shade, including some of the more common species found on lawns, including springy turf-moss and pointed spear-moss.
There are steps you can take to try and reduce the amount of shade cast over your lawn. If your garden is north facing and is naturally in shadow for most of the day, there’s very little you can do short of moving the sun. However, there are other things you can do, such as ensuring trees and bushes are regularly trimmed back, and any fallen debris is cleared as soon as possible to allow as much sunlight to get to your lawn as possible.
Weak grass
Thin or weak grass is a prime target for moss, as there’s very little competition, and the bald patches are like an open invitation. Lawn fertilisation and top dressing are just a few treatments that can help boost the health of your lawn and leave it better prepared to defend against invaders like lawn moss.
All of the above conditions are ideal for moss growth, and they also double as difficult conditions for grass growth. If your lawn is currently meeting some or all of the above conditions, your grass is likely not as strong as it could be, and is currently vulnerable to moss. In the winter months lawns are more susceptible to moss, so it’s important to have a premium winter lawn treatment service provider to help defend and protect your lawn.
While moss control services can treat the moss that is currently growing on your lawn, winter lawn care treatments tackle the problem at the roots (no pun intended), and prevent moss growth before it even occurs. Winter lawn care treatments leaves your lawn stronger, healthier, and better equipped to fight off any would-be invasive plants such as moss.
As part of our winter lawn care package, Lawn & Weed Expert will give your lawn an application of specially formulated winter lawn feed to keep your grass healthy and strong, carry out any necessary moss control treatments, and check for any potential lawn diseases.
Winter Lawn Care
Although there are many conditions that could lead to moss growth, a lawn doesn’t need to fit all (or any) of the above criteria to fall victim to moss growth. If you’re not sure what kind of treatments your lawn needs, why not request a FREE survey from Lawn & Weed Expert today?
One of our lawn care professionals will survey your lawn and let you know what treatments will best benefit. They will also provide a no-nonsense quote letting you know how much you might expect to pay for our services.
Free Survey
Read More: Is Moss Bad For Your Lawn?
