Six Months Later...

More than eight months passed since I removed the grass and hoped for the moss to take over. Summer months did not bring many changes, though some moss started to appear. I noticed that moss first appeared on the patches of land that were muddy and that did not have clumps of dead grass.

It was a dry summer, so I purchased a simple poly tube with a few mini-sprinklers to keep the surface moist. Contrary to the lawn watering, I turned the sprinkler on frequently, but for a short period of time. The schedule I used more often was twice a day for 5 minutes. Since I used mini-sprinklers, the water usage was not huge (someday I should write a post on how to select and install sprinklers - it took me some time to figure out).

In early September, I had moss in the most areas, except for the most sunny ones. In September, it started raining and the moss got a boost it waited for! Now in mid-October, all my ex-lawn is a nice mossy carpet:

There are still some areas where the dead old grass shows through, but that I could live with.

Lessons
1. Do not leave dead grass. Try to make your future mossy area as muddy and dense as possible without remnants of old plants.
2. Mossy columns did not work for me. They just dried out even though I watered them and put some water-retaining material inside:

3. Be prepared to wait and to do some weeding.
4. Falling leaves can be easily removed by a blower.
5. I did transplant some moss, but I feel that the vast majority of the moss I have now just grew by itself.
6. As I've written earlier, squirrels and raccoons dug my lawn a lot. I even had to cover some parts of it with a bird net. For an reason unknown to me, they stopped digging in early summer and it still is not a problem. I hope they would not start again next spring.


The main lesson is: creating a beautiful moss lawn is easy. You can do it!

No changes

I am somewhat disappointed - I hoped that the moss will become more uniform sooner. A month passed by and the moss side of the backyard has not changed at all. It is still all covered in moss, but because of the yellow spots, bare holes, remnants of old dry grass it still looks ugly:

No changes compared to March 1 picture.

One more tabletop moss garden

I have found a very beautiful fine-grained dark-green kind of moss on an old wooden surface behind my house. I am curious if it can also grow on soil. Here is a patch of it in form of another tabletop container moss garden:

Outdoor tabletop moss garden

Working with moss on my lawn got me more interested in moss in general. I discovered five or six different kinds of moss just around my house!

It really is beautiful. I've assembled a small table-top garden from different kinds of moss that I collected around the house (click to zoom in):


The diameter of this bowl is about 8 inches. In order to keep the moss moist but not drowned, I made a hole in the bottom of the bowl and put some water-retaining material (from diapers) under the moss layer.

Creatures of the night

For the second time within the past week I am waking up to discover my moss hill destroyed by some night creatures:

Raccoons, I presume.

The only preventive idea that comes to my mind is to cover this area with a bird net. Unfortunately, the net will be visible (unless the moss will grow tall enough to cover it, which I doubt).

The only other permanent solution would be to "enforce the perimeter", that is to try to attach some netting to the fence, but I am not sure how to do it. I should do some research on the internet.

I am curious - are there some chemicals that stink in a way that is disgusting for such animals and is not harmful or detectable by humans? Even if there are, this would be a short-term solution. Stinking plants would be ideal...

Moss Column

As one of the accents for my moss area, I was planning to have some kind of pedestal or column with a plant or small tree on top of it.

I checked local garden stores - they have many vases and columns, but I found none in the style I like - simple modern geometric style, like a plain cylinder.

Reading about living walls got me thinking about building a column from moss.

I started with a roll of metal mesh. Usually, it comes zinc coated, which is a bad idea for moss. Fortunately, my local Home Depot carries green vinyl-coated version. The price is about $10 for a small roll which will be enough for two 2-feet columns.

I wrapped a sheet of wire mesh to form a cylinder, tied the sides together with wire, hammered 3 iron rebars into the ground to keep the column in place, and then filled it in layers:

• Outside layer - moss "sod", which I have taken from the area around the future column
• Then some soil with added water crystals (to retain more moisture)
• Regular soil in the middle

Here is the top view:

My last step was covering the area around the column with gravel for contrast.

Let me present my creation (click to enlarge):

This column is 2 ft (60 cm) tall, and 9" (23 cm) in diameter.

I had a small tree growing in my yard, and I thought that its bonsai-like form will go well with the moss. I will shape it a little after giving it some time to acclimatize to the new place.

For now, the mesh is clearly visible. I hope that the moss will grow through the mesh and will hide it.

Picture. Day 13

Added some accents - border between the patio and the mound and stepping stones (that are not stones, but just "pools" of pebbles).

The moss area looks yellow from this angle, even though the moss is actually green. The problem is the remaining dead grass that is sticking out all over the place. I can't come up with any practical method of removing the dead grass.