Live moss for mulch

Hi all, I've recently gotten into growing tropical plants in my living area, and since my tiny house is all southfacing windows, I decided to just turn my whole house into a tropical growing climate, and create an inside ecosytem, insects and all. (I'll just sleep in a bug net.) Thats how much I love plants, I dont want to live in a house, I want to live in a tropical jungle immersed in plants and as part of an ecosystem.

I recently started paying attention to all the natural moss growing outside, most of which is Star Moss/Tortula Ruralis. I read up on it was pleasantly surprised that it can go years without water but the moment ot gets water it instantly comes alive and turns green. It has no roots so it doesn't leach nutrients out of the ground, and only adds them to the ground when ots underside dies of and decomposes. It wants to hold onto moisture as much as it can, so it does a better job conserving moisture than regular dry/dead mulch.

So this got me thinking, why not just use live Moss instead of mulch, it'll replace weeds growing, help with soil health, and work great with no dig/hugelculture/compost since moss easily peels back to put compost underneath and then recover.

It actually also works as a moisture indicator to let you know when the top inches of soil has dried out. It also works great with cacti and desert plants since it is drought tolerant and can go long periods without  water.

So I'm trying out using live moss as total ground cover/mulch with my Tropical plants as well as my food garden. Curious if anyone else is doing this. There's not alot about using live moss on Youtube, other than for Bonsai trees and Terrariums, etc. As of now, my thoughts are Star Moss/Tortula Ruralis in particular is an unnoticed gem that grows everywhere  with huge permacuture potential. I'm new to the forum, so maybe lots of people here are already using it, I need to dig through the threads more still, but as of yet I haven't seen much on moss in any of the categories. I'm excited to read through the Fungi category as I want to get into mushrooms and such!

Good thought out project worthy of regular updates here and pictures. Have you mastered adding pictures yet?  Select attachments below your reply box and select the picture file and add a description.
I have maintained moss lawns on the north side of a house with trees overhead.  It was sandy clay with minimal organic material but it only required watering and blowing debris off to maintain it.  

I've played around with this a little bit. I've never tried to id my mosses, but the ones here are the drought tolerant ones that go dormant for long periods. The soil they grow on tends to be poor, in damaged areas. They're typically one of the first things to establish on bare, sandy dirt that's developed a bit of a silty crust on top from rain agitating the surface. They also grow in shallow skiffs of soil that accumulate on rock surfaces. They generally don't do well in my garden beds, where the soil is... different. I'm not sure what it is they don't like, but maybe something to do with it being more aerated or better draining.

I've brought handfuls of different types of moss home to try to grow them, but they generally don't take. The only one that has is some kind of yellow green moss that looks kind of like a shag carpet. Last year I found three leaf bags full of it at the yard waste drop off place I scrounge at and brought it home to use as mulch in a perennial ornamental bed. It sat there all hot summer then, when it started raining in the fall, quite a bit of it actually perked up. It's not terribly happy, but it seems to hang on.

Apart from that, we have some moss growing as a ground cover in a jade houseplant. Again, it's not terribly happy. It's never grown into more than a very thin green film over the soil. We've also tried to get a tray of it established to use under our dishrack for dishes to drip into. We haven't put much effort into it, and it's pretty much the same as the stuff in the jade.

My husband has a large terracotta saucer outside with very luscious moss growing in it that he takes care of. Every fall it gets beautiful orange mushrooms in it, some kind that commonly grow here. I don't know why it's so much happier than the stuff under our dishrack.

I'll post some pictures later on. All I have at the moment are some of my husband's moss mushrooms.

One problem that might crop up is that moss tends to like acidic soil and the plants you're trying to grow might not. I hope you make it work though!

Jan White wrote:I've played around with this a little bit. I've never tried to id my mosses, but the ones here are the drought tolerant ones that go dormant for long periods. The soil they grow on tends to be poor, in damaged areas. They're typically one of the first things to establish on bare, sandy dirt that's developed a bit of a silty crust on top from rain agitating the surface. They also grow in shallow skiffs of soil that accumulate on rock surfaces. They generally don't do well in my garden beds, where the soil is... different. I'm not sure what it is they don't like, but maybe something to do with it being more aerated or better draining.

I've brought handfuls of different types of moss home to try to grow them, but they generally don't take. The only one that has is some kind of yellow green moss that looks kind of like a shag carpet. Last year I found three leaf bags full of it at the yard waste drop off place I scrounge at and brought it home to use as mulch in a perennial ornamental bed. It sat there all hot summer then, when it started raining in the fall, quite a bit of it actually perked up. It's not terribly happy, but it seems to hang on.

Apart from that, we have some moss growing as a ground cover in a jade houseplant. Again, it's not terribly happy. It's never grown into more than a very thin green film over the soil. We've also tried to get a tray of it established to use under our dishrack for dishes to drip into. We haven't put much effort into it, and it's pretty much the same as the stuff in the jade.

My husband has a large terracotta saucer outside with very luscious moss growing in it that he takes care of. Every fall it gets beautiful orange mushrooms in it, some kind that commonly grow here. I don't know why it's so much happier than the stuff under our dishrack.

I'll post some pictures later on. All I have at the moment are some of my husband's moss mushrooms.

One problem that might crop up is that moss tends to like acidic soil and the plants you're trying to grow might not. I hope you make it work though!

Very interesting! Yes, all mosses can be different so it'll be an experiment for sure. I've had great success so far using Star Moss/Tortula Ruralis. It doesn't have any roots and when I harvest it, I just scoop underneath so I'm taking at least 1/2" of the ground underneath it which is usually just years of the old dead moss mixed with pine needles slowly decaying. That way its active  underside isn't disturbed at all. Everywhere I've translanted it, it doesn't miss a beat, even just keeping it on metal trays, (in shade) its happy and always greens right up when it gets water. Star moss is very slow growing, so its not a good moss to use the plug metbod to hope it spreads and fills an area in. Eventually it will in the right conditions after a long time, but with Star Moss I just use enough of it to cover 100% coverage, and I also pack it in pretty tight as I'm installing it. The tighter its packed in, (within reason, without damaging the moss) the less air gaps for moisture to escape and the better it will retain moisture. It can get packed/compressed quite alot before suffering any physical damage. I'll try and get some pics posted

So far, I've only been using the moss with tropicals. I'll start using it in the garden next spring. My only concern at this point is for plants like Bananas that send offshoot pups up through the soil to propagate themselves. Hopefully, the offshoots will be able to grow through the moss. I'll wait and see what happens and adjust accordingly, might have to keep the moss layer around and under the plant much thinner to make it easy for pups to grow through.

 Note: the brownish areas on some of the watered and greened up moss was already like that before I harvested it, and not a Pristine patch to begin with. Its virtually all stayed in identical condition after harvesting  with no distress or deterioration. The brown green edges on the Banana plant in the last pic are where the edges of the moss are beginning to dry out. When the edges get watered, they green right up. I have to still add more moss to the pot.

I've been letting some if it sit for weeks in these trays and dry up, it turns a nice dark green. The moment I water it, in less than 10 sec it greens right up like all the green trays in the pics above. The real test will be to see how it does long term, but I'm confident it will thirve. It hasn't shown any distress or signs of faltering at all.

Nate Nute wrote: when I harvest it, I just scoop underneath so I'm taking at least 1/2" of the ground underneath it

That's probably where I'm going wrong. I take a little bit of dried moss, blend it up in water, and soak the surface of the soil. It takes to long for things to grow at our place that I feel bad pulling up big chunks of moss. Yours looks great, though.

I doubt something as robust as a banana would have any trouble growing through the moss, but I guess you'll find out.