A PH of 6 is not too bad, but more than likely your lawn could benefit from
a lime application once per year. Most turf grasses are happiest with a PH
of around 6.5, but there are a few exceptions. You didn't specify your
grass type. The symptom of a lawn with too low PH is the lawn will not
green up properly even after fertilizer is applied. If your lawn greens up
nicely when you apply fertilizer, you really don't have a problem with soil
PH as far as the grass itself is concerned, however lowering the soil PH
will probably help with your moss problem. Iron sulfate will also help with
moss. When you fertilize look for fertilizer with iron. Check the active
ingredients and you should find iron sulfate or ferrous sulfate.

You can apply lime with or without thatch. It really doesn't matter. The
lime is going to eventually soak into the soil even if there is thatch,
although thatch may slow down the process. If you have thatch, it sounds
like this is your biggest problem and you should address it first.

If you have the capability of bagging, you may want to do that for a few
months until the thatch problem has been eraticated completely. If you are
using a mulching lawn mower, make sure you mow often and don't take too much
off at any one time. Thatch usually happens because of poor mowing habits.
If you are not mulching or bagging, you should be. However even if you are
mulching, you should be mowing as often as you should because if you try to
take off too much, you are going to overwhealm the mulching system of your
mower. Some people think that if you mow your grass low, you won't have to
mow as often. Actually the reverse is true. For instance let's say I want
to mow 1" off my grass, if I mow my lawn when it is 2" tall and I mow to 1",
I'm taking off 50% of the total grass which is a bad thing. If I mow my
lawn when it's 4" and I mow it to 3", I'm only taking off 25% which is OK.
Different grass types like to be mowed at different heights, so research
what type of grass you have to find out the recommended mowing heights.

"Pucky Loucks" wrote in message
news:uEXgc.50994$dg7.48531@edtnps84...
Hello, I've just started my very first lawn project ever. Very excited
about it. I just tested my soil and it's ph is 6 considered acidic.
I've got a pretty good go of thatch and moss. Should I lime it first
and then dethatch? or dethatch and then lime?

I would think that dethatch would be first to open up the ground, but I
just want to make sure I don't over look any thing.

Thanks, Hope someone can give me a clue. would like to make this a
hobby.

Pucky