Lawn help! Mossy and lots of weeds

[annabannan]

So my back garden lawn has a lot of moss and weeds and my mission this spring is to turn it into lush green grass by summer. My plan is get rids of the moss quickly. How am I best to do that? And then I plan to airate it overseed it with seed, lawn sand/soil but is there anything I need to do? Also it’s quite shady in places so recommendations for grass seed for shady areas would hugely appreciated!! TIA

Scarify!

Get a lawn company to do it if at all possible. It's backbreaking doing it yourself and if you don't keep it up, it all goes to shit again within 2 years.

Consider leaving it? moss is better than trees at soaking up CO2 and weeds are just wild flowers. A short grass lawn is just a green desert when it comes to wildlife. And please don't use a lawn company they'll just use a ton of pesticides.

Your garden is shady and damp, you're going to get moss unless you keep killing it off. The grass will come through more in the summer anyway and you'll probably hardly see the moss then.

You need to aerate first, and introduce some air and gritty soil into it before you can persuade the moss to leave.

I'd wait a few more weeks as it is too wet to work on lawns yet, then go over it all with a big garden digging fork. Push all the way in and then wiggle the tines forward and back to make holes. Do that a few inches apart all over, sprinkle with a ton of sharp sand, brush in and then chuck handfuls of seed about.

The best way to reduce weeds is with a combination of hands, knees a sharp knife and some determination, and then to mow it every couple of days. The grass copes fine with that. It has evolved to be eaten by herbivores all the time, but weeds don't like having their heads chopped off.

Thank so you much!

Don’t do what DH did and use horrendous moss-killing chemicals from the garden centre. It scorched the lawn black for weeks and I had to keep the little DSs off it. I imagine it did terrible things to the worms and bugs in the soil. Moss flourishes in this damp weather then goes away in the summer - I like the little daisies and violets which pop up and wouldn’t have a “perfect” green rectangle now.

I’m giving up on my grass. I had new turf laid after my renovations turned the back into a sea of mud. Then we had a drought so hosepipe ban and I watched it all become brown. I know grass actually recovers quite well but the lawn became pitted and uneven (not sure how this happened) and weedy and bare in places. It’s a small area (city garden) so I’m thinking of alternatives!

Moss goes black when it's dead. It isn't toxic but you are supposed to rake it all out of the lawn rather than just leave it there to help get air to the new grass.

I spent a fortune making my grass lovely and lush last summer. Scarifying, resending, weedkilling etc. It looked lovely.
After the shade and rain of winter I'm exactly back where I was this time last year.
This year I'm just going to get one weedkiller treatment, reseed, pull all big weeds myself, and let the rest stay.