In addition to various garden weeds, mosses are the most unpopular guests in allotment gardeners’ plots. At least when they spread in the lawn of the property. Mosses have a bad reputation. They are an important part of the ecosystem in many landscapes on our planet. If they spread across lawns, this is a sure sign that the meadow grasses are hardly getting any nutrients from the soil. For better or worse, they have to leave the field to less demanding plants such as weeds or mosses. For example, mosses get their nutrients from rainwater.
With the rising temperatures, the blades of grass on many properties and in allotment gardens are now waking up from their hibernation. But often different mosses have spread on the lawn over the winter. If you don’t feel like it, you should thoroughly rehabilitate your lawn. And this is how it works:
If you want to remove the moss in the lawn, you can’t avoid scarifying. Plucking the mosses out of the lawn by hand is not only extremely tedious, but also work that never ends. Electric scarifiers are equipped with small, sharp blades that cut small furrows in the lawn, making it more permeable. The side effect is also extremely useful. Because the scarifier also catches a lot of thatch from moss, weeds or grass roots.
Important: You can dispose of moss and other lawn thatch on your own compost. Before doing so, however, be sure to mix the green waste with other garden waste so that it does not clump together.
If you have moss in your lawn, this is a sure sign that the lawn is not getting enough nutrients. This is usually because the soil is too acidic, meaning it has a pH of 5.5 or less. With a pH soil test you can easily check this within minutes. As a first countermeasure, it is helpful to neutralize the acidity in the soil with garden lime . Because this is tedious by hand, especially over larger areas, and it usually does not work evenly, it is worth using a spreader to get the right dosage.
Once the meadow is well aerated and the soil is neutralized, the stalks need a growth booster. The urgently needed nutrients can only get into the soil with high-quality, organic lawn fertilizer. As a rule, these are significantly less contaminated with heavy metals than mineral fertilizers. In addition, organic fertilizer can be applied with new or overseeding. A good middle ground could be organic-mineral lawn fertilizers . For the back of your head: Use the lawn clippings after the next month as a natural fertilizer. It contains important nutrients that they withhold from the soil when they spread the clippings on the compost after mowing.
Which brings us directly to the fourth act of lawn renovation. Before new lawn seeds come into play in the last step, you should allow the soil a further and sustainable nutrient boost. This is particularly successful with the hummus miracle weapon called compost. Worked into the soil, the compost acts like organic fertilizer thanks to its humus layer. You can achieve a similar effect with a soil activator, which is applied as granules and brings the microorganisms into the soil in a concentrated form.
The fifth and last act is about sowing new lawn seeds and giving the area the necessary density and strength again. Here, too, it is worth using a spreader to help. If you don’t want to buy it separately, you can rent it and other garden tools in many hardware and garden centers for a fee. It is important that you sow certified seed if possible. You can tell by the RSM label (Regular Seed Mixture), which guarantees that the mixture contains only first-class grass seeds. Depending on the provider, you should budget around 60 to 80 euros for a lawn area of 200 square meters. The following applies here in particular: if you buy cheap, you sow at least twice.
The renovation described is complex and takes time. If you want to avoid subjecting your lawn to such a cure every year, you should ask yourself why the moss grows at all and start right there. Answer A: Moss also thrives in the shade, shaded grass quickly stops growing. Seeds optimized for penumbra can solve the problem. However, if hedges or other obstacles completely cut off the lawn from sunlight, grass is a hopeless case at this point. Answer B: Blades of grass do need moisture – but in a healthy amount. In the worst case, waterlogging and permanent moisture can cause the roots to rot. The cause is usually the over-compacted soil. The only thing that helps here is digging and mixing in some sand, which is much more permeable to water.
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