WHAT TO DO IN MID MARCH
- Clean up garden pools, start feeding your fish
- Now is the best time to plant trees and shrubs
You can easily guess what question I am asked most often at this time of year. Yes, you’re correct – how do I get rid of moss on lawns? The first thing I would say is, you can control moss but you will never get rid of it for good. It’s a problem that must be tackled on a yearly basis. Moss has been growing on your lawn since October but you don’t really notice it until this time of year when you are giving it its first cut.
Most people tackle the problem by going to the local store, getting whatever is available over the counter, applying it in a lot of cases incorrectly and ending up with a black mess that entails hours of raking and the lawn getting worse by the year. There is an alternative to the above scenario, it’s called Pro Green Osmo Moss remover. It’s relatively new in Ireland, it approaches the problem of moss control in a different manner to anything else I have found on the market. Very simply Osmo contains what grass likes and what moss dislikes, what’s new about this you may ask, let me explain.
Growing grass successfully entails knowing the type of fertilizer it likes and for the fertilizer to work properly your soil must have the correct PH level (PH is the technical term for the amount of lime in your soil). Grass likes a PH level of between 6 and 7 where moss is thriving the PH is much lower, that means if there’s moss in your lawn you need to bring up the PH. PH adjuster applied at this time of year does 2 things, it shocks the existing moss, releases the fertility that is applied to be taken up and used by the grass resulting in a green lawn. The ingenious bit about Osmo is that as well as containing fertilizer which is specially formulated to feed your lawn over the whole season, it also contains an enzyme which attacks the root of the moss thereby killing it and the remaining moss disintegrates slowly and actually turns into beneficial fertilizer. Osmo will not turn your lawn black or stain your patio and it’s organic so you don’t have to keep your pets off the lawn. Apply the PH adjuster first, it takes 2 weeks to work itself into the soil then apply the Osmo moss remover. The result is a super moss free lawn all season with no back-breaking raking needed.
One note of caution, Osmo is not a magic wand, it will not solve years of moss build up in one application. I have been using it now for 4 years and I can honestly say moss is no longer a problem.
