Moss lawn - Ask Extension
My Dunkirk house in on a heavily shaded lot. Attempts to grow grass were futile. Moss is now pretty well established in most of the yard. I like th...
Knowledgebase
Moss lawn #879346
Asked July 29, 2024, 10:01 PM EDT
My Dunkirk house in on a heavily shaded lot. Attempts to grow grass were futile. Moss is now pretty well established in most of the yard. I like the moss and wish to improve it. No mowing, no fertilizing, no watering. The only difficulty is weed control. I am trying 41% glyphosate, which kills the weeds, but has left some patches of moss turning brown while other areas are still green. There seems to be more than one variety of moss and some of it is sturdier than others. I would appreciate any assistance that you may be able to offer for making this moss lawn an attractive and eco-friendly alternative to grass. Are you able to offer assistance with soil testing and recommendations for improving the conditions for moss growth?
Calvert County Maryland
Expert Response
We don't generally recommend use of an herbicide to maintain a moss lawn, especially in eco-friendly gardens, though if physical removal of any weeds is not possible, there might not be another option, at least for aggressive perennial weeds. Moss is not a vascular plant (weeds and ornamental plants are), and this difference means that some herbicides are less likely to affect them, though we don't have a reference list for which chemical ingredients would or would not injure mosses. Mosses are very species-diverse, though, so some may be more sensitive to certain ingredients in an herbicide (even if it's not the active ingredient) than others. (If you're curious, Maryland Biodiversity Project lists over 300 species of moss documented in Maryland.)
We do have information and guidance online for soil testing and soil testing labs, though not all mosses require soil of a certain pH; some are quite happy in non-acidic conditions. It's simplest to let the natural population of mosses in the area "seed"-in (with spores drifting on the wind) to soils of the type they need, rather than trying to alter soil conditions to suit certain species of moss.
The trade-off in maintaining a moss lawn may be that time and money is saved on fertilizer, mowing, reseeding, liming, aeration, and other routine practices used to maintain turfgrass, but instead more time needs to be devoted to removing weeds from the moss, either by hand or by spot-spraying herbicide. Other than watering during drought to help mosses survive (though some that are well-established may just go dormant and reanimate when enough rains return), make sure they have good soil contact to "root"-in (mosses don't have true roots, but can have root-like growths to help them hold onto the soil surface), especially after new clumps are planted or pieces get tossed about by wildlife looking for insects or worms in the soil below.
Miri
We do have information and guidance online for soil testing and soil testing labs, though not all mosses require soil of a certain pH; some are quite happy in non-acidic conditions. It's simplest to let the natural population of mosses in the area "seed"-in (with spores drifting on the wind) to soils of the type they need, rather than trying to alter soil conditions to suit certain species of moss.
The trade-off in maintaining a moss lawn may be that time and money is saved on fertilizer, mowing, reseeding, liming, aeration, and other routine practices used to maintain turfgrass, but instead more time needs to be devoted to removing weeds from the moss, either by hand or by spot-spraying herbicide. Other than watering during drought to help mosses survive (though some that are well-established may just go dormant and reanimate when enough rains return), make sure they have good soil contact to "root"-in (mosses don't have true roots, but can have root-like growths to help them hold onto the soil surface), especially after new clumps are planted or pieces get tossed about by wildlife looking for insects or worms in the soil below.
Miri
