On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 10:26:14 -0700, Clayton1970 wrote:

I'm pretty new to lawn and garden stuff and new to this newsgroup. I live
in NW Washington and play hell with moss. It chokes out my lawn mower and
leaves large clumps all over my lawn when I am done. Is there a quick and
easy way to get rid of it with out damaging my grass?? My grass has come a
long way, but I would like to get rid of the moss.

Good day Clayton. I'm always getting calls about moss and removal. From
your desrciption, I would assume that your soil has high clay content and
you very likely have poor drainage. To reduce your moss, you will need to
correct the base problems.

Drainage.
If your lawn is a bit wet and soft in these moss covered areas then you
have drainage issues. The corrective stance would be to hard pipe your
roof drains, french drain or curtain drain some of the worse areas and
hard pipe that away from the property and if you don't have the grade to
do that then you would need to construct a dry well for capture. Most of
this is rather cheap to do... if you do the labor 80)

Clay soil.
Clay soil is mostly this issue with lawns and moss. You will read that you
need to lime your lawn to raise your ph. The ammount of lime you will need
to use to correct low ph in your soil maybe so much that you'll have to do
it over a few seasons. I would suggest that you consider lime if your soil
is under 6.3 ph. Grass will do better with a lower ph than a higher ph.
When your ph gets over 7, you'll find the weeds become much more of a
problem. Imho the best stuff to bust up clay soil is plain old grass roots.

Suggestions.
Figure out if you have drainage issues on your property. Do what you can
to correct them.

Wait untill fall.

Lay moss killer. Wait untill moss has turned completely black.

Thatch the lawn area with a power thatcher. Bluebird is one of the best
machines to use imho. Rental should be under 80 dollars for the day.

Over seed the lawn area, fertilize and water.

Aerate the lawn in the spring and if the lawn area is really hard clay,
aerate again in the fall. From here on out, aeration is the only thing
that you will need to do on a regular basis. One or two times a year for
the next few years and your moss will not be much of an issue.

Btw, where are you located here in the Pnw? I'm in Bellingham.
Have a good day.