How often do you water and for how long each time?

Do you know what kind of grass you have? Is it fescue (stays green all winter) or Kentucky bluegrass (turns brown during winter dormancy)?

Do not add lime until you have the results of a good soil test. You can get a great soil test at Logan Labs in Ohio for $20. Or you can get a poor to mediocre soil test at any land grant university for about $15. The Logan Labs soil test will tell you just what your soil needs and how much. In addition to the macro nutrients (NPK) it will tell you how much of the micronutrients you need. You can get the micros on eBay. It's not expensive but it might be more work than you want or need to do. Tuning up your soil, getting your watering right, and using organic fertilizer a couple times a year should prevent future moss.

You will never need loads of new topsoil to have a great lawn. What you have is fine. The fastest way to better soil health is organic fertilizer. Chemical fertilizer has no "health value" for the soil. Organic fertilizer is, literally, food for the soil. It is made up of food like corn, soybeans, alfalfa, wheat, and even animal products. Personally I think you can get by on plain alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow) at a rate of 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. For your yard, 20 pounds looks good. It comes in 50-pound bags. Down here the cost is about $13. It would be interesting to know what it costs in AK.

You should be able to have the yard of the month with the organics, proper watering, and mowing at the right height. Mowing for your grass would be more toward the highest setting than the lowest setting.

Thanks dchall for the helpful reply. In response to your questions/comments:

1. In this region of SE Alaska it rains enough that it's typically unnecessary to water at all. The yard/grass is watered naturally on a regular basis.

2. I don't know what kind of grass it is but it turns brown during winter dormancy so then I would assume Kentucky bluegrass and not fescue.

3. There is no reasonably priced soil testing available in this area so if I were to get a soil test to determine the pH and thus whether adding lime would be helpful, I suppose I could send a sample to the suggested Logan Labs for testing. I'm not sure which of the tests available I would want, probably the most basic but I don't see a price schedule available at their website. Getting down to the nitty gritty micronutrient assessment may be further than what I require, as I'd be more looking to simply "tune up" the soil for decent yard health. As I mentioned I do know that typically the natural soil in this region is on the acidic side, largely because of annual heavy rain which washes nutrients out of the soil leaving behind acid forming elements. Almost certainly I could say offhand without testing that the soil would probably benefit from liming. I noticed there is a granular liming product available locally at the garden center, this stuff: http://www.lillymiller.com/sweeteners.html which I'm thinking could make sense to consider.

4. Per your mention I just checked at the local hardware/garden center and they don't sell alfalfa pellets so I thought maybe the local pet store might but they're closed today Sunday so might check tomorrow. If that isn't available I'm not sure what other type "organic fertilizer" I might seek out. I should mention I happen to have some horse manure that's been composting several months but probably too green yet to consider as compost or fertilizer to spread onto the yard.

Another product I came across at the garden center was this Moss Out stuff: http://www.mossout.com/lawns.htm of which the description seems to indicate it might do what I need done to alleviate the moss problem and help the grass grow better "Killing the moss gives grasses a chance to "reclaim" the lawn" as it says.

Any further comment appreciated, and thanks again.

This post was edited by sgull on Sun, Apr 13, 14 at 18:31

Are there any farmers or ranchers nearby? If so then there is a farm and ranch feed store. That's the place to get alfalfa. Corn meal is okay to fertilize with. Any ground up nut, bean, or seed is good. Deer corn is not good because those corn pieces are all seeds. You'll have a yard full of corn weeds. They mow right down and don't come back but it's sort of a waste of fertilizer.

Horse manure is ready to use if you can plunge your hands deep into it and scoop a big ol' double handful up to your nose and find that it smells just like the forest floor after a summer rain. Most people just scoop some into a bucket and smell the bucket. It really will smell wonderful when it's done. The very last set of microbes which process the manure give it that smell. If it smells rank, dank, acrid, moldy, musty, sour, manuery, or anything but incredibly fresh, then it's not ready for the yard yet. Your nose is already calibrated to test the compost's doneness.

Since you are not watering, do you notice standing water for days at a time anywhere in the yard after it rains?