In article ,
Janet writes:
In article o.uk,
says...
Nice house wall painting weather, patching up the few places the
paint has failed. One patch I *know* I wire brushed and repainted
last year. It's failed again, because there must be moss embeded into
the stone/old lime mortar.
So how to kill the blasted stuff, preferably in one hit and
permenantly. Will Roundup do it?
No you need a specific moss killer.
Well, Pathclear (a similar product) kills moss pretty instantly,
much faster than it kills the plants.
Doing it permanently means changing the conditions to be
unfavourable to growth, e.g. repointing and stopping gutters
overflowing down it.
Shed sells something for treating
mossy roofs or you could use ferrous oxide in water, the active
ingredient in lawn moss treatments. When it's dead brush it out of the
crevices with a wire brush.
Lawn moss killers usually have warnings against getting them on
stone/brick/paving, as they can stain permanently.
Talking of moss killer I posted a query a few weeks ago asking advice
on about dethatching the "lawn" which had become so mossy it was sodden
and unusable, grass rapidly retreating.
I borrowed an electric lawn scarifier to try, which was so
effective I went out and bought the same model (£60 in Dobbies GC, same
in B and Q). It raked out enough moss to fill 16 cubic-metre builders
bags. Then I treated the lawn with a moss, weed and feed gritty stuff.
Huge black patches where it had been pure moss.
However, weeks later the moss is all gone, the ground is not nearly
as wet and spongy and and the grass is rapidly growing back into the
gaps and looking good. Lots of work but worth it.
I found (by accident) that setting the mower one stop lower than
usual caused it to rip out tonnes of moss, a much larger volume
than the amount of grass cuttings normally collected.
I have used the combined lawn moss/broadleaf weed killers and
fertilisers in the past. They used to be very effective, but the
broadleaf killer in them is now much less effective (moss killer
still works instantly).
--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]